


Kiss & Cry: Going for the Hattrick

by heibai



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: BECAUSE THEY'RE ALREADY IN THEIR TWENTIES NOW OK, Figure Skating vs Hockey, M/M, Possible TW: past bullying, Romance - Comedy - Slice of Life - All that jazz, Side ship: Markhyu(c)k, slowburn-ish, the kids are de-aged to around 16/17 here, this is very self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23643484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heibai/pseuds/heibai
Summary: After an undisclosed event happened to him four years ago, figure skater Renjun developed some sort of… apprehension towards people who practice hockey.Avoidance was easy when the only thing you share in your home rink is the toilets. But when he’s forced to mingle with them in a three-day outing? When Renjun was forced to sit beside his worst nightmare on the outgoing trip?Save to say, he thought it was only supposed to be a long weekend MT.So what the heck happened that Renjun found himself stuck in the middle of an exposure therapy?
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun & Lee Donghyuck | Haechan, Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno
Comments: 17
Kudos: 126
Collections: noren fic fest round 1





	1. unexpected entry

“You don’t seem excited.”

“For the outing? No.”

Renjun has been staring at his empty suitcase for the last thirty minutes while beside him, the hurricane in the name of Lee Donghyuk has finished stuffing all of his training clothes into his duffel bag, complete with two spare Uniqlo light down vests and a tattered skating boots that he said would come in handy when, in his words, _‘we’re doing rowdy, illegal games with the others on the rink.’_

Renjun nearly jumped out of his cross-legged stance on the dirty floor of their shared dorm room when he felt the back of Donghyuk’s hand pressing against his forehead. 

“What are you doing?!” He said, frantically swatting the dusty hand away from his face. 

“Checking if you’re sick,” Donghyuk answered with a shrug, “because you’re the one who hasn’t stopped yapping about this MT since like… since coach Sicheng told us about it.” 

To be fair, Renjun _was_ excited for the MT. Really, he did. 

Until…

Well until he found out that their yearly prestigious summer camp is going to be tainted by the presence of the speed skating club AND the hockey team. 

He said exactly so to Donghyuk, and the lad dared to respond to it with a belittling laugh.

“They’re harmless!”

“Right…” Renjun squinted and gave Donghyuk a ten seconds grace period for him to surrender (which was more than he usually would’ve given him, mind you). But after seeing that he has no plans to back down anytime soon, Renjun decided that he too won’t hold back with his verbal beat down, “of course you’ll say they’re harmless. But wasn’t it one of the hockey kids who gave you that legendary hickey from last winter’s meet? Was he harmless then?”

  
  


That shut him up real quick.

  
  


Five, intensely awkward seconds passed before Donghyuk gathered enough energy from within him to mutter a disbelieved _‘not fair’_. His face was aflame in a dark red flush as he quickly made his way out of the room. 

_‘That should be_ my _word,’_ Renjun thought, as he scraped his will from the cool, tiled floor like he scraped his training top from the pile of freshly done laundry by his feet. He rolled it up into a tight bun, and pushed it to the corner of his suitcase. 

_This is going to be a long night._

  
  
  


_ 

  
  


“Yoooo! It’s twinkle toes!” 

Renjun has _barely_ (note that word: barely) made his way out to the parking area of their ice rink and already he’s heard like, twelve different voices hooting and hollering from the far reaches of the lot, slightly hidden by the two mini buses ready to take them to their destination. He gave the bunch of hockey kids a customary wave and went to his designated bus. 

What is it that they eat, huh? Pure crack cocaine? Powdered caffeine snorted through their left nostrils? How could they be this energetic _this early_ on a Friday morning when Renjun felt like he’s just gotten his soul pushed through a paper shredder as he dragged his, of course, overfilled suitcase with a hot water thermos on his other hand. 

To be fair, he only managed to get 3 hours of sleep last night, what with his brain still functioning in its elementary form aka no sleep for you if we have an outing tomorrow. 

He was hoping to get a good snooze on the bus, but looking at the reality of his situation? That was as impossible as his dream of winning Olympic gold in the next winter games. 

“What’s uuuuuuuuuup!!! Long time no see man!” Renjun has _just_ handed over his luggage to the bus crew to be tagged when he felt heavy arms plopped across his shoulders, burdening him with the idea of early morning socialisation so much it physically hunched his back.

“Morning _gege_...” he said with a pained smile. To be honest, he shouldn’t have bothered to fake it. This person is so blinded by his positivity he honestly wouldn’t have noticed if Renjun didn’t answer his greetings with anything other than an annoyed grunt. 

It’s a pity his parents taught him manners far too well. 

“How many times should I tell you?! Call me Yukhei la~” To the nearly painful attempt at camaraderie, Renjun only gave Yukhei a grimace poorly masked as a smile. Thankfully, he didn’t need to deal with it for too long, as he was called to the circle of other hockey kids with shouts of _even more_ informal language. 

As in, _‘A-Hei come here you [Redacted]’_ level of informality. 

Renjun slipped out of his armhold and climbed the steep stairs of the bus, more content to hide his face behind the curtain and plug his earphones ASAP to ignore the rowdy laughter. He gave the empty bus a quick look around to decide the best position for him to be in. Middle to front, of course, as the back was reserved for _them._

He spotted a tuft of unruly, strawberry blond hair peeking from the very front seat and let out the breath that he never noticed he’s held.

“Morning,” Renjun mumbled as he took his seat, and the kid pulled out one of his earphones to return the greeting with a beaming smile.

“You’re on time,” Jaemin playfully nudged Renjun on his ribs and lowered his voice to a stage whisper, “left Donghyuk to fend for himself again, huh?”

It was the first time that day that someone managed to coax a genuine smile onto Renjun’s face, “don’t worry, I already set fifteen alarms on his phone and ordered a taxi for him.”

“You’re too nice, man.”

“Don’t talk to me if your solution is carrying him unconscious on your own back.”

“Fair,” he gave Renjun a closing smile and returned to his own world, closing his eyes and plugging the earphone back to his ear.

This is why Renjun can slightly tolerate speed skaters. Slightly. Because even when on the ice they’re tripping hazard at best and a living rotary blade slicer at worst, when they’re off the ice, they’re a bunch of the chillest people Renjun has ever met. Overly ambitious, yes, as the trait comes together with sports where a millisecond of time difference is what it takes to determine a gold and a silver, but chill. 

Trying to utilise this peace as best as he could, Renjun decided to catch that much needed, much coveted nap before any unforeseen circumstances could prevent him from doing so. 

But of course, the moment he closed his eyes, he heard the booming sound of Mr. Choi, the hockey team’s coach, _of course,_ rattling the windows of the bus with his loud greetings. 

“GOOD MORNING Y’ALL.”

“GOOOOOD MORNING SIWON!” 

Renjun’s eyes shot open with the rumbling footsteps of the entire hockey team, which meant, twenty five sets of large feet and toned legs, and the ensuing informality that comes from having a criminally young, criminally talented Korean American coach. 

“Are we on the wrong bus?” Renjun asked himself as he squinted his eyes to read the reversed number printed on a sticker pasted on the front window. 




He frantically checked the informational message on his phone from his coach. 




He’s on the right bus. _What the fuck._ Why was he placed in the _HOCKEY BUS?!._

“Ah! There you are!” Mr. Choi, _the_ coach Mr. Choi, tall, tanned for the gods, and with hands as big as the circumference of Renjun’s face, caught him by surprise (as he was too busy trying to message coach Sicheng for a reasoning as to _why_ he was placed in the friggin _hockey bus)_ slapped him square on the back and nearly caused Renjun to choke on his last night’s dinner, “Sicheng’s kid, and uhh… Shimmy’s kid?”

Renjun could hear his conscience screaming inside his skull, _‘Shimm...y? WHO THE FUCK IS SHIMMY?!’_

“Coach Changmin told me I’ll be in your care this morning.” Jaemin, the ever so charming Jaemin smiled at Mr. Choi and was given back an enthusiastic thumbs up. 

“He sure did!” He spun around on his spot, and grabbed the mouthpiece of the central PA line of the bus. It came to life with an accompanying loud electrical crackle and a high pitched whine. Renjun too, whined with it and grabbed Jaemin on his arms, using his advantageous position of having his back towards Mr. Choi and the cacophony of random noises to beg, and he did mean _beg_ for Jaemin to help him.

“What?” Jaemin asked him, straining his head so he could hear Renjun’s silent pleads better.

_“Please ask him if I can move to the other bus…”_

Mr. Choi said a random joke and the whole team erupted in a loud laughter. 

“Huh? What??” Jaemin asked him once again after he let out his own version of courtesy laughter, which was far more genuine a.ka better faked than Renjun’s choked up heaves. 

“ASK HIM IF I CAN MOVE TO THE OTHER BUS!” 

Silence.

It was… silent. 

Mr. Choi looked at him in silence. 

Jaemin cringed at him in silence. 

The whole entire hockey team was silent.

The parking lot was silent.

The whole world seemed to hold their breath in silence and all Renjun hoped, all Renjun wished for, more than being able to finally land a clean quad salchow, was to disappear into particles of dust and be forgotten by everyone in this world. 

  
  
  


“I’m sorry, Renjun, isn’t it?” Mr. Choi spoke to him after taking a peek at him and Renjun could only look at him with a trembling grimace-slash-apologetic smile on his leathery face, dyed completely in crimson pigment, “were you trying to talk to me? I’m really sorry if I ignored you.” 

He could easily tell Mr. Choi his wish, right then and there. But he was petrified. This man could compact him into a puck-sized cylinder and hit him across the rink with only one easy flick of his wrist. A Renjun kind of puck, which probably means he’ll swerve suddenly to the side and miss the goal by a good 2 meters. Terrifying.

Renjun was ready to swallow his wish with a heavy heart when Jaemin, bless his heart, rose up to the occasion and took his words right out of his slacked jaw.

“All of his teammates are on the other bus, Sir. And didn’t you say that you want to discuss your programme with your coach too?”

Renjun gave Jaemin a thankful, yet still terrified, glance before whipping his head back to Mr. Choi’s kind gaze that he didn’t know for sure if it was genuine or if it was condescending. 

“Aww, don’t worry about not having friends! You’re in good hands if you’re talking about wanting to have fun!”

There are quiet hoots of agreement coming from the back of the bus. It sounded suspiciously like Yukhei.

“Uhh… it’s just that… my coach said that… he wants to uhh… brief me on a new sequence he choreographed so…”

Mr. Choi rolled his eyes and in one clean swoop, took Renjun out of his seat by the back of his shirt’s collar, not unlike how a mother cat would pick up her kitten by the scruff of their neck. “MT, this is an MT! Time to have fun and relaaaaax for a while. Why won’t Sicheng listen to me… he shouldn’t push his kids too much!”

Renjun could only flail his arms in a silent plea for Jaemin to save him as he was being dragged to the thick of the forest. To the center of a feeding frenzy. Dropped in the middle of a gorilla enclosure (#RIPHarambe). Jaemin, again, bless his heart, only grimaced at Renjun from behind his seat before his gaze disappeared beneath the brim of a cap he pulled from the pocket of his jeans. 

“Use this time to make some friends, okay?” He said, dropping Renjun cold on an empty seat beside… beside…

Beside the worst possible person for him to be stuck with for the next three hours, honestly. 

“‘Sup,” Mark, the team captain greeted him from across the aisle and Renjun only gave him a thin smile in return. 

“Hey! Will you pleaseee finally introduce me to Yerim? Like, pretty please?? You’re close with the girls right? We’re all soooo looking forward to this trip because of that ya know. Come on! Will you introduce us?” YangYang, the most talkative kid from the junior defense bunch, ignored the briefing Mr. Choi was giving at the front of the bus and blabbered non-stop from the seat in front of him and wiggled his bushy eyebrows in a confusing gesture.

Why is it that everything they do confuses him? Renjun never knew if their heckles and name callings and swears and laughter and snickers and firm punches on his shoulders and ruffles of his hair were done with a good or nefarious intent in mind. Well… honestly, Renjun knew the answer to that already. They’re good kids, if not a bit (a _lot)_ rowdy. And insensitive. And rude. Slightly. 

But they’re good. Renjun knew they never meant any harm from anything that they do. 

Still…

The bus rumbled to life and Renjun has no other option than to accept his fate that he will be trapped inside a hell that he’s been actively avoiding, and that he won’t ever get the much needed sleep that has begun to haunt him as a constant throbbing from the back of his eyeballs. 

They began to back out from the parking spot, and from the corner of his eyes he saw a familiar figure, looking like a dishevelled jobble top with a red bauble, flying across the lot before collapsing in a heap of bags and jackets against the steps of the other bus. Donghyuk. 

A quiet, amused mumble sounded from his right. “Late again, huh?” 

Renjun saw, from the corner of his eyes, the star forward of their hometown team and one of the newest additions to their national youth team, Lee Jeno. He was staring at Renjun with a peculiar look on his eyes. Like, morbid interest, or something. 

“Morning, twinkle toes.” 

  
  


_

Those were the first words ever uttered by Jeno to him in… oh, he didn’t know… 4 years?

It seems an impossible feat, what with them training under the same roof, albeit on two separate rinks. But don’t underestimate Renjun’s power of making a precise timetable and begging coach Sicheng to train when the youth hockey team has vacated the premises for at least an hour. 

“Hi,” was all he could manage to say. Renjun spent the next minute rummaging through his backpack in the effort to nurture the precious silence he’s planted between them.

It was an utter failure. 

“What are you listening to? Is that the song for your new program?” Jeno asked as he leaned over to peer at the screen of his phone. It caused the hairs on Renjun’s nape to rouse up in alarm. “Yo that’s my fave band! So you _do_ have a taste, huh?”

“N,- no! No, it’s just… it’s nothing, it’s just a random playlist.” 

Lies.

(Because clearly plastered on the song’s original artwork are words that said: “New Free Skate!!! <3 <3 <3”)

“Can I borrow an earphone? I stupidly forgot to bring mine lol.” Renjun was trying to rake his sleep-deprived brain for a polite rejection phrase when he was saved by another of Mr. Choi’s loud announcements from his shotgun seat at the very front of the bus. Saved? Try being taken out of a crocodile burrow and into a lion’s nest. 

“Let’s sing some songs to keep our energy up!” He said, and the whole entire bus, sans Renjun, cheered (yes, even Jaemin).

Cheesy, 80s rock music blared through the bus, and he thought he was saved. 

Not.

“Oh I love this,” Jeno grinned when _‘Eye of the Tiger’_ played from the PA system, “don’t you? Do you know the lyrics?”

Renjun only gave a shrug with a half nod, “a bit.”

“Won’t you sing?” He said in between mumbles of indiscernible tunes.

Renjun kept his silence as he shrugged once more. 

Songs came and went, and Jeno’s irrelevant attempt at striking easy conversations also came and went. It was a terribly… odd experience. He’s always thought that Jeno hated him. Or worse, loved him as an easy person to make fun of, maybe. What with the fact that he… did what he did. 

Everytime he saw Jeno he was taken back to his days training at their old ring. The look on his eyes were colder than the ice that repeatedly caressed his cheeks as he fell on it, over and over again, while Jeno only watched at the side, circling around him like a shark would do to its dying prey. 

So why, dear lord heaven above, was he trying so hard to have a conversation with a sleep deprived Renjun that day, out of all time?

It was hardest for him during the toilet break and snack time, because Renjun could no longer cite the loud music as the reason for why he couldn’t hear anything that Jeno was saying.

The buses stopped at a roadside convenience store but most of the kids decided to take shelter from the humid summer air inside the air conditioned bus. Again, jeopardising Renjun’s plan of taking his nap. 

“Are you planning to go to nationals?” He asked an utterly stupid question after taking a bite from his power bar. Stupid, because the answer was so, so straightforward the question was essentially useless.

“Yes.”

He should’ve asked Renjun if he was going to do the Junior Grand Prix, that would probably entail a longer answer for him, which was _‘maybe’_. He did so badly at junior worlds last year that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be picked for the team or not.

And it was awkward silence once more. 

Though well, it won’t be so for long. Because Jeno decided to drop a bomb right after Renjun took a bite of his banana.

“What have I ever done to you?”

Renjun nearly choked on the mushy, slimy, alien flesh inside his mouth. His eyes dart from Jeno, who said his question far, far louder than he did before, to Mark, who although to untrained eyes might look as if he was busy typing things on his phone, was very obviously perked by the prospect of drama unfolding just an arm’s reach away. 

Jeno looked at him like this was supposed to be just another simple conversation for them to make, as if he was only asking Renjun about the weather. Or his last night’s dinner. Or the health of his goldfish back at his parents’ house. Simple, wasn’t it? Everything is always so simple for him. 

“I’m only trying to make the journey less boring. Is it wrong?” Renjun felt as if there were a dozen pairs of ears trained to him. Right on him. Right on Jeno, who, of course, just can’t keep his mouth shut for once. Not even for one goddamned second. 

It was probably a miracle, but Renjun managed to swallow his half chewed banana and gave Jeno the half-truth of his situation, “sorry, I’m tired. I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

He thought it would be the end of everything, because surely, _surely_ Jeno would understand his reasoning and leave him alone? Syke. Because YangYang, who’s surely eavesdropped on them since the start of the journey (because when has he ever _not)_ , carried his words like an unfortunate breeze of hot wind to the rest of the bus. “Aww, twinkle toes is super stoked for the MT he couldn’t sleep guys, that’s so adorable!” 

The bus broke off into a chorus of laughter, and for a brief second, Renjun was taken back to a particular winter afternoon five years ago, when the exact same noise rang within his ears like scrapes of bare fingernails on chalkboard. In the past, his old, nearly deserted ice rink echoed their laughter into unending waves, just like how the enclosed bus caused the noise to be amplified beyond human measures on that day. 

“Shut up.” Renjun found his mouth moving on its own, and he found his hands moving on their own too, clasping a bunch of trembling fingers in front of his lips in an effort to muffle his words that seemed to automatically flow out of his throat. Just like his nausea, who swelled and pushed against his tonsils like lappings of a snake’s tongue. _‘Don’t antagonise them,’_ his brain’s screams went unheard and unheeded, as the nearly garbled string of _shut up_ kept on tumbling out of his uncooperating mouth. 

_Don’t antagonise them don’t antagonise them don’t antagonise them don’t,-_

“Hm? What was that?” Jeno asked him, his eyes wide with genuine curiosity. 

It felt as if his consciousness was split into two entities. One, who was rational, and the other, trapped in fear he thought he’d left behind on the chapped ice of his old ice rink. He didn’t want to ruin it, again. He didn’t want to start all over, again. 

But there seemed to be a magical hush that crawled through the length of the bus and everyone heard him. From Yukhei who was lounging at the four seater at the very back to Mr. Choi who was chatting with the driver, they heard him.

“Shut up!” 

Jeno’s eyes narrowed into a puzzled look but Renjun wasted no time deciphering it because this time, his legs were the one who moved on their own. Picking himself up from his seat, down the aisle, and out of the bus. They picked up his walking gait into a jog, then into a sprint the moment the soles of his shoes hit the sizzling asphalt of the parking lot. He didn’t stop, not to address Mr. Choi’s concerned calls, nor to the near-miss attempt of stopping him in the form of a hand grabbing around his wrist courtesy to Jaemin, until he’s found himself cowering beside the sleeping form of his coach at the very back of the other bus. 

He was the main point of interest to the whole entire bus in this one too, but Renjun didn’t really care. They’re his friends, here. They’re his friends and he’s finally found himself in the right element. 

“What is it?” Sicheng asked, not even bothering to pick up the eye mask from his face, “aren’t you supposed to be on the other bus?” Somehow, he sounded a little bit disappointed when he asked Renjun that. But he couldn’t care less. Just once. Let him defy Sicheng’s words just this once.

“Can I please crash here?” Renjun asked, nearly begged in return. He waited in bated breath for Sicheng’s decision, and sighed out in relief when his coach nodded his head. 

He made himself comfortable, cushioning his head against Sicheng’s crossed arm, and closed his eyes. The warmth and familiarity of Sicheng acting as a surefire remedy to calm his racing heart enough that Renjun could finally make a worthwhile journey to the realm of slumber. 

The MT hasn’t even started and he’s already re-lived a nightmare of his past.

It’s going to be a long weekend indeed… 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELCYUM TO ANOTHER STORY OF MINE YAAAALL ITS BEEN 84 YEARS?????
> 
> I want to thank [noren 2020 ficfest](https://twitter.com/norenficfest) for being the driving force behind me writing a 30k story in under two months, pls click the link to be directed to their twitter :DD 
> 
> I based this story on **prompt number 65** and the undercurrent of my love for figure skating because when i saw the word 'skating' in the prompt i was like, oh lord i gotta have that.  
> The story will be SELF INDULGENT! Renjun is so shamelessly an aries!! I shall put skating references that are totally lame!!! There will be some technical jargon in this story but honestly it's not gonna confuse you. At least I hope it won't... but hey google and youtube is your friend, go out there and learn figure skating terminologies if this story pique your interest for them!  
> Oh, and just a heads up, I'm not rly good with my hockey reference because... I don't play hockey so... shout out for @asiannoodles for the brief intro to hockey that u gave me, go sharks! 
> 
> Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! I really loved the process of writing this story and I hope everyone of you will love reading it in return :D
> 
> hmu @ my twitter [@moon__soil](https://twitter.com/moon__soil) ~
> 
> ps:  
> I'm posting all chapters at the same time!! so just chill and lean back and ... take your time?  
>   
> pps:  
> Kiss & cry: an area in a figure skating rink where figure skaters wait for their marks to be announced after their performances.  
> Hattrick: achievement(s) based on the number three.


	2. poor, awkward & unaesthetic position(s)

The feel of ice gliding under his blade after such a long time spent sitting inside a cramped minibus was a godsend. 

“Have you stretched?” Sicheng asked him from the sideline, and Renjun only answered with a tired snuffle. 

“Of course coach.”

A.ka the most awkward stretching session ever because Jaemin was there, as was Donghyuk. Don’t forget little clueless Chenle who was there only because the girl counterparts of their age group were in the phase where they believe that boys carry cootie eggs in their hair follicles. Don’t forget the senior ladies figure skating team gossiping at the side with their occasional side eyes to their corner of the room. 

“What happened?” They asked, nearly in unison. 

“Nothing.” 

Donghyuk scoffed, “you always say that.”

“I mean it!” Renjun defended himself from the (actually correct) slander with his head peeking from underneath his legs. 

Jaemin, body folded in half in a low side lunge, piled onto the conversation, “they are puzzled, ya know, won’t stop blaming YangYang for driving you away.”

“Shit… I feel bad, it’s not his fault,” Renjun showed his guilt with his head upside down from doing a backbend.

“Apologise, then!” Donghyuk, to his mistake, said his words while attempting to balance himself on top of a gym ball with one knee. It was then very easy for Renjun to topple him off and drove him to his back with a simple slap of his palm. 

“No.” Renjun simply said as he made his way out of the warm up area with his boots in tow.

“Why?!” Three voices flanked him from the back, and it was enough for Renjun to whirl around on his spot and yell, exasperatedly, without care that the bunch of senior ladies were looking at him with bated breath from pure excitement of the drama unfolding right in front of their eyes. 

“And where do you think I should put my face afterwards? Up my ass?!” 6 sets of bewildered eyes stared at him and it caused Renjun to sigh in defeat, “they must think I’m a freak. How am I supposed to apologise?”

The room devolved into a land of tensioned silence so thick nobody dared to move. Not even the three ladies who had nothing to do with the current conversation, finding themselves in the wrong time and wrong location as they could only awkwardly sit cross legged in front of the mirror to Renjun’s right. 

Renjun was waiting for someone to break the spell. A cough, a sneeze, a crack of a wooden floorboard or a squeak of their shoes against the carpeted floor. But when another five seconds passed and everyone still hadn't moved, Renjun decided to exert an enormous amount of mental energy to break the barrier by clicking the blades of his boots with one easy jingle of his wrist. 

“I’ll see what I can do later. Thanks for the talk.”

Everyone sighed in relief. He walked out of the room with a visible hunch on his back. He wasn’t thankful _at all._

  
  


___

“Kids, we won’t start any serious on ice training until tomorrow. Just try to get used to the ice today,” back on the rink, Sicheng yelled from across the room as he was helping his youngest kindling lace up her boots. Most of everyone was content with that. Except for Renjun. He was feeling slightly on edge, and he’s been itching to disappear inside something, anything, that he braced himself and skated towards his coach with silent determination.

“Can I… run through my program?” He timidly asked, and as always, Sicheng regarded him only with a little nudge of his shoulder.

“Didn’t I tell you to just warm up today.” 

“Please?” 

To his little squeak of a plea, Sicheng finally looked up to him, hands stretched in the midst of making a loop, “just go and warm up.”

“No jumps. I swear.” 

Sicheng looked away from him, briefly staring at an indiscernible far away spot before focusing back on lacing the boots in front of him. Renjun worried on his bottom lip as he waited for an answer. _‘Any answer, please? Don’t leave me waiting here like a fool,’_ he thought as he bounced on the tip of his toe pick in impatience. 

“Fine.” He finally said, “promise me that you’ll take it easy.” 

Renjun couldn’t stop himself from jumping in joy. He whirled around and zoomed into the audio portlet while saying his thanks to Sicheng, who only responded with a smile hidden behind a disinterested hum. 

He sent away the little girl, who trailed Renjun for a short while before being twirled around by a group of overly enthusiastic novice ladies.

“Doing a run through?” Donghyuk skidded to a halt beside him not long after Renjun plugged his phone to the PA line and it crackled to life from above them.

“Uhuh.”

“I wanna do it too.”

“Well, ask coach Sicheng if you can.”

Donghyuk pouted his lips at that, huffing and puffing away while mumbling a train of rantings. Renjun couldn’t care less (actually, he couldn’t care _more._ Because he automatically put Donghyuk’s short program song next on his playlist without him needing to), and tip-toed to the center of the rink to get ready for the start of his routine. 

Sicheng, bless his heart, put a melodious chime to help take Renjun’s nervous attention away from the fake start of the song, and off he went, gliding across the ice in smooth forward strokes. 

The song started off calm, nearly quiet in its whispers, and Renjun moved his upper body likewise. Another chime, and his arms flew upwards as if to welcome an old friend. And the friend, in this case, was his first jumping pass. From the corner of his eyes Renjun caught the cautionary glare of his coach and relented, turning the planned rebellion into a delayed axel like the good student that he is.

Donghyuk would’ve defied Sicheng. He would’ve done the jump even if their coach threatened to not send them to the tryouts if he did. 

The thought made his legs itch. 

He wanted to jump. He really did. He wanted to feel the rush of air and the nearly nauseating sensation of his world whirling around him even more than he wanted safety. But he remembered the time he ignored Sicheng’s warnings and nearly twisted his right ankle with a botched landing and Renjun decided to trade the upcoming triple toe with a dizzying twizzle. 

Twizzles are like, his third favourite thing in life. He loves it, he’s good at it, and he looks great doing it. It’s the only move that’s never failed him. 

So of course, it failed him then. 

His toe pick caught the surface of the ice when he was whipping his right leg to maintain his momentum, and hello ice! Meet your new friend, the butt. 

Renjun could hear the collective hiss from at least seven different people, but he was too busy trying to handle the shooting pain that crawled up his right hip to care for the embarrassment that’s begun to creep up his periphery.

“Are you okay?” A little girl asked.

“Did you bite yourself? Let me see.” A sweet senior lady (a ka reigning national silver medalist Kang Seulgi), kneeled in front of him and hesitantly tried to tilt his head around. Afraid that she’ll see red, probably. Or a chunk of tongue cleanly bitten off in a soup of blood and spit.

Not feeling the mood of being babied after, Renjun rolled to his back on his own volition and silently stared at the ceiling in bated breath until his song rolled to an end. 

A familiar face suddenly appeared at the top left corner of his vision, and with a little nod of his head, the stranger managed to send the group of concerned ladies skaters to flee away in a flock of gigglish bunch. 

It took him a long while before he noticed who those piercing eyes belonged to. But the moment he did? Well, save to say, Renjun has never wished for the ground to open up from beneath him to swallow him into a nameless grave faster than he did right then. 

“Would you feel better if I told you that you fell to the rhythm of your song?” Jeno asked with not a hint of irony in his voice. 

“Is it the hockey team’s turn to take the ice?” Renjun avoided the answer to Jeno’s rhetorical question with one of his own. 

Of course it was. He could hear the sound of sharp blades skidding through the icy surface and Donghyuk’s loud threat to at least let him do his run through, followed soon after by his squeal which must’ve been caused by him being tackled to the ground by three burly boys in baggy polyester pants. 

“Did they see me?” 

“Every single one of them.” Jeno said as he offered a hand to help pull Renjun back to his feet.

He could tell that Jeno wasn’t lying. Worse, he could tell that he said what he said not from a place of malice. It was more like a high ground of innocence and cluelessness. And Renjun hated him even more for it.

Renjun ignored the goodwill extended to him and struggled back to his blades by himself. “How wonderful,” he mumbled from underneath his breath, and skated away from Jeno as fast as he could. 

“What did I do wrong now?!” He could hear Jeno shout, and as a display of his irritation, Renjun turned and gave his question a reply with as scathing of a tone as he could muster,

“How hard it is to just lie, huh?!” 

Shouldn’t have done that, though. Should’ve just done what he’s always done and ignored Jeno’s unsolicited comments because of course Renjun didn’t see where he was gliding and collided with a score of hockey kids and caused them all to topple down like bowling pins. 

_Just abso-fucking-lutely wonderful._

  
  
  


_

  
  


“What did I tell you?”

“Take it easy…”

“What did you do?”

“... not take it easy.”

“And look where it got you.”

In pain and in the brink of season delaying injury.

It was exactly an hour after the twizzles shenanigans and Renjun found himself confined on a thin, rickety bed of the ice rink’s infirmary. By his side was, of course, his coach, who was sighing and tutting like a middle aged mother that he was. 

“To fall on a twizzle…” he hummed. Sicheng was keeping an ice pack against Renjun’s hips and used this rare moment of helplessness to perfectly berate the _shit_ out of his unfortunate student. “What’s the matter with you today? Is it because of the hockey,-”

“No it’s not!” Renjun cut Sicheng short with a loud yell and surprised himself after seeing how _surprised_ Sicheng was with his intrusion. Feeling guilty, he repeated his words, calmer this time, and with an amount of shame ample enough that he had to hide his eyes behind the length of his arm, “no it’s not…”

“Did something remind you of your old rink again?” Sicheng mirrored his approach and mellowed his tone when he spoke next, to which Renjun could only give him a weak nod. Not sure if he could contain himself from either lashing out (and maybe regretting it right after) or breaking down (which he _for sure_ would regret right after) if he gave Sicheng anything more.

“You know they’re not the same people.”

“Jeno is.” 

Renjun paused as he remembered the day he nearly thought that he would die out of fright when he saw Jeno standing on his new rink. His sacred rink. A place he thought would finally be his safe haven. Tainted. 

Jeno looked like a bloodhound that day, with him his target. The smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and those blabbering lips of his. They were the source of his many sleepless nights. 

He remembered how Jeno flagged him down from all the way across the ice. Surrounded by his new teammates whose eyes _twinkled_ at the prospect of finding a new nickname for the little, scrawny, quiet, nerdy member of the figure skating ensemble. 

He brought the curse all the way from his old rink. That cursed name together with the cursed memory of those people… laughing at him… the way it echoed in the empty rink… 

“Renjun.”

He flinched when Sicheng gave his sore spot a firm press that he didn’t know was deliberate or not. But at least it worked to wake him up from the spiralling tunnel he found himself trapped in. And for that he was thankful.

He peeked from under his arm and saw the warmth exuding from his coach’s understanding gaze, which, he instantly treasured because those things are rarer than a blue moon, “they’re not the same.” 

Renjun gave him a smile. It was mostly done to reassure Sicheng, but it did help, even if only for a little bit, to fool himself into thinking that he’s okay. “They didn’t even laugh at me when I fell.”

“See?” He said, patting Renjun’s sore spot and only laughing at his sufferings. With one final pat, Sicheng sent Renjun to roll off the bed before he threw the still barely cool pack at his expecting arms. 

Renjun was ready to yeet out of the infirmary when Sicheng raised his index finger in the universal gesture of _‘wait a sec’._ He made Renjun wait for a while as he scrolled through his phone, but Renjun didn’t think much of it as he believed that his coach only wanted to brief him on the program for tomorrow morning’s exercise. 

Isn’t it hard to always be wrong? Because what came next was so out of left field it caused him to pop his eyes open so far it hurt. 

“I heard from Coach Choi that they’re going to have a disco night, or something, later after dinner. You should go.”

“Wait what,- no!”

“Whoops. My fingers slipped.” Sicheng said as he shoved his phone on Renjun’s face, showing on its screen the text (with two blue check marks beside it which mean that it’s _read_ ) he just sent to Coach Choi. It said: _‘is it okay if Injun-ie joins your boys for whatever dance party yall are doing?’_

He was fortunate enough to see the messages being replied to in real time. 

_‘Of course he can! What good timing too, I just finished yelling at YangYang for what he did this morning. An apology is way overdue._

_Anyway, it’ll be at 8 pm. Tell me if he has any song request.’_

Sicheng responded to Renjun’s wide-eyed horror with a sadistic smile and an out of place wink. 

“Well, do you have any song requests?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You shall notice that the chapter titles are figure skating references on their own huehuheuheehhehe
> 
> This is just one of the many self indulgent part of this story but here's a fun tidbit: Renjun's short program's (usually abbreviated as SP) description was inspired by one of Deniss Vasiljevs' (aka my precious lil bub) 2019-2020 SP to Bloodstream by Tokio Myers.  
> ... well honestly all description to Renjun's skating is inspired by Deniss Vasiljevs ok i told you this story is self indulgent.


	3. severe lack of unison

Renjun managed to amass an army (more like a small band of reluctant comrades) to come with him to the hockey team’s disco night. Jaemin, who came with him because he felt bad for that morning’s embarrassing accident, Chenle, who was only there because he didn’t want to be told to sleep early, and Donghyuk, who, to be fair, would’ve probably show up voluntarily anyway because it’s an open secret to Renjun and their small figure skating gang + Jaemin that he’s dating (or a least routinely hooks up with) one of the hockey team member. 

“SPEEEEEED SKATIIIING!” 

They’ve only set one boot onto the rink and already Renjun was nearly run over by a squad of rowdy kids zooming through them at lightning speed with no care of their own or other people’s safety. 

Sure enough, one of them tripped and barreled to the side of the rink with a loud thud. A fleeting worry crossed his mind, but with the time needed for him to shake it off, the kid was already up on his feet, running to his friends with a wide grin on his flushed face. 

“OI! SPEED SKATING!” Yukhei, the tallest of the bunch, who Renjun thought was way too old to still be playing with the gang of coked up juniors, called out to Jaemin with an accompanying handwave that looked more deranged than welcoming. He rushed towards them and skidded to a stop, sending a spray of dirty snow onto their poor faces. “Let’s race!” He demanded. Not ask, mind you. Demand. Yukhei grabbed Jaemin’s hand before the kid even got the chance of answering his demand and pulled him to god knows where to do god knows what. 

One down, three to go.

Wait, scratch that. 

Two.

Donghyuk has gone AWOL. Of course.

Chenle didn’t seem to be bothered by the chaotic turn of events though. With little care for the tacky coloured spotlights that glided across the ice and the loud, old school mid 90s to early 2000 songs that must’ve come from Coach Choi’s throwback playlist, Chenle glided to the refreshment stand with a little shrug of his shoulders. 

With no better option, Renjun reluctantly followed suit. 

When he asked his fellow figure skaters to accompany him to the event, be it novices or juniors or seniors, everyone told him that they were too tired from coach Sicheng’s ballet and body conditioning masterclass from hell to go to the disco. But here they were… all of them… laughing and dancing and jumping around on their cursed toe picks like they’ve lost all care to the world. 

Liars, the lot of them. 

He was pouring himself a glass of coke in resentment when a familiar voice, which he’d been hoping to  _ not _ hear (because he thought said person is way  _ too cool  _ for tacky events such as this), popped up from right behind him. 

“Never thought I’d see you here!” Jeno shouted over the loud music, and it, together with the firm slap he gave smack dab on the center of Renjun’s back, caused him to jump in shock, spilling a little bit of coke onto the carpeted section of the rink. 

“Stop doing that.” He hissed from under his breath, using the pick of his left toe to help distribute the bead of coke so it would disappear before the overworked rink caretaker noticed it. 

Jeno must’ve pretended that he didn’t hear Renjun’s grumble over the loud music because he kept on insisting for an opportunity to further annoy the  _ shit  _ out of Renjun. “Wanna play?” He asked, nudging his head to the center of the rink where a chaotic amalgamation of hockey kids and figure skating ladies were trying their hands on doing synchronised skating to the classic tune of Britney Spears’  _ Toxic.  _

“Sorry, I can’t. I’m chauffeuring for…” Renjun looked to his left, hoping to see, and in conjunction, throw Chenle under the proverbial bus. But of course, with how his luck has been lazing around the bottom of a gutter, he found nobody there. Somewhere at a distance, Renjun could hear the faint sound of Chenle’s signature laughter as he surely had found himself a playmate to spend the rest of the night with. “Well, for the kid who I swear just a second ago was  _ here.” _

“ _ Oh come ooon _ .” Jeno whined, tugging at the sleeves of Renjun’s sweater like an impatient manchild that he was, “I think Chenle is old enough to handle this party by himself.”

The confusion that came after hearing Jeno say a name that he shouldn’t have known was enough of a distraction for him to lose full control over his limbs. It was then  _ very  _ easy for Jeno to drag him off the carpet and onto the ice. At the very last second, Jeno yanked the plastic cup away from Renjun’s hand and placed it precariously on the edge of the railing.

“Stop underselling yourselves,” he laughed when Renjun wouldn’t stop staring at him with a disbelieved frown. The sound of such a rare phenomenon was enough to make Renjun grow a little bit flustered. “We all know you. Just like how you know all of us.” Renjun could feel himself warming up in a weird combination of shame and pride after hearing Jeno’s observation. That alone was bad. But add to that the fact that Jeno  _ must’ve  _ noticed the blush growing across his face, proven by how he reached out to pull at the collar of Renjun’s turtleneck so that it covered his reddened nose, then Renjun has certifiably gone off-his-shits in his  _ what the fuck  _ quotient. “Right? You know all of us by name, right?”

Renjun shrugged off Jeno’s hand from his arm and pushed himself away, even if the crowded ice prevented him from going farther than a few strokes forward, “it’s just weird. I thought every single one of you is so busy thinking about yourselves to care about anyone else.”

“We’re not  _ that _ much of a jerk,” Jeno let out a light scoff, and Renjun matched it with one of his own

“Really?” He said, and added onto it with a whisper only meant to be heard by himself, “tell that to my childhood trauma your kind gave me.”

Jeno seemingly, again, chose to ignore Renjun’s dour mood and grabbed his hand before taking him on an easy loop around the rink. 

It felt so… oddly familiar. Oddly effortless. Like they knew the comfortable speed of the other person’s casual strokes and the distance needed to make the bend without getting tangled in each other’s limbs (the same couldn’t be said to Yukhei and Jaemin, who Renjun saw were struggling to get up after getting their legs nearly, literally, wound up together like a rope. Somehow.)

Well… they  _ did  _ learn how to skate together. But still. After everything that's happened, or more accurately, after everything that  _ didn’t  _ happen between them for the last four years, Renjun’s conscience couldn’t take that as the sole reason for their unexplainable harmony. 

A pair skating couple glided past them and they stopped in courtesy. That, and also in awe. Because in one easy flourish, the little lady was thrown by her partner nearly 10 feet in the air (that’s an exaggeration, of course), effortlessly doing a jump split and a twist to the down beat of the song, before landing so lightly on her legs she could’ve done all that while cleaning and reapplying her smudged up lipstick. 

“Hey! What did I tell you?! No tricks and jumps allowed!” The caretaker yelled from the side of the rink. 

That’s right. The caretaker. 

It’s magic how Coach Choi (and in extension, Coach Sicheng, Coach Changmin, or any other people that should be responsible for the wellbeing of their charges) thought that leaving a bunch of overly enthusiastic athletes in one rink without any professional supervision is a good idea. Because the pair only responded to the caretaker’s warning with a loud  _ boo  _ before they dashed away and off of the rink, disappearing by the bend that led to the restrooms. 

_ ‘So that’s why her lipstick is smudged,’ _ Renjun thought, amusedly, before he was pulled aside with a dizzying twirl that only stopped when his body collided with Jeno. With  _ the  _ Jeno who was looking down on him with a glint in his eyes that he doesn’t like  _ at all.  _ Not even one bit.

Because he’s seen it before, on countless people. A look of smug confidence that would precede any and all questionable shenanigans done by all these dumb hockey kids. 

“Let’s try that.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I mean, I’ve seen the videos, it can’t be  _ that  _ hard.”

“Jeno,-  _ don’t.”  _ But before he could protest any further, or better yet, run away from the rink, Jeno already wound his arms around his torso in a secure and inescapable hold. “WE COULD LITERALLY  _ DIE!!!”  _

“Hot food! Hot food coming through!” Jeno yelled as he practically dragged Renjun around in an effort to gain some semblance of speed to build momentum in such a crowded rink. Renjun was starting to break in cold sweat, but any of his panicked protests fell to deaf ears. “You’re so light I could throw you across the rink,” Jeno dared say with what must be a smarmy grin plastered across his lips. 

Renjun only grumbled back his disagreement for such an emasculating statement. 

“Get ready.” He could tell that Jeno was about to throw him from how he suddenly pressed his palm ever so slightly firmer against his lower abdomen, sending an uncomfortable tickle up his belly. But before his awkward giggle could turn into a laughter, muscle memory took over his body when Jeno turned their bodies sideways and yeet him up to the air like the weightless ragdoll that he was.

While time was suspended as he was helplessly rotating on the air, Renjun thought about some things.

The fact that Jeno  _ did  _ spend a few months learning to pair skate before he hightailed to hockey, the odd tidbit of Jeno having a way hotter palm than normal people, his own alarming nature of trusting people way too easily (even after everything that’s happened), how painful it is if he were to bash his kneecaps from botching his landing or colliding with some poor, unsuspecting kid, and that this throw could possibly turn into a quad.

One more turn to make this a quad people, half more, people… THIS JUST IN! IT WAS A QUAD, PEOPLE!

And just like that, impact.

Time resumed. Noise, returned. Gravity? Gravity greeted him like a golden retriever seeing its owner after three years of separation. 

The force of his landing purged him of the remaining oxygen still left behind within all crevices of his body, and it was only by miracle that he managed to hang on to his landing leg and not send himself barreling like a human sized bowling ball into the refreshment stand. But that didn’t really matter, though. What mattered most was the fact that he managed to land that damned monster of a jump. Cleanly. And god dammit, it was probably the best landing pose to a quad of whatever type that he’d ever done in his entire life. Curses.

As he was slowly getting his bearings back and welcomed the sounds of his surroundings past the muted membrane of his adrenaline addled brain, Renjun was rushed by five different people, and counting. 

“Holy shit, that was so cool!” Someone said. Could it be YangYang? It sounded like YangYang. Though Renjun couldn’t really tell from how dizzy and giddy he was feeling.

“Show us again! Show us again!” Chenle was jumping beside him, and when Renjun reached out to give his cheek a pinch, he miscalculated the distance and instead plopped his hand on his playmate’s head, youngest hockey team member Park Jisung. He didn’t seem to mind, though. 

At his side, a girl’s voice pierced through the hazy wall of sound, “how could he do that?! I’ve been training for that for years!” 

_ ‘lol suck it sloppy lipstick girl,’  _ Renjun giggled to himself. 

In his lightness, in this deficit state of consciousness, Renjun found it easy to ignore all the annoying  _ oohs  _ and  _ ahhs  _ of his peers and focus on the sound of familiar laughter that grew louder by the second. 

“We did it!” Jeno came in like a hawk and swooped him off his feet with an easy lift. Light, he said? Light he was. Renjun felt as if his brain was a helium balloon and it didn’t take him long before he buried his giggles onto the nook of Jeno’s neck. 

For some reason, time seemed to stretch around him once more, and strangely, he didn’t want it to end. Jeno’s palms were securely placed on his back, and they felt so warm. Just like how it felt when he had them around his stomach, but better. Because then, he didn’t feel like they were going to make him throw up. They felt like they were going to help him fall to the best, dreamless sleep he’s ever had in his life. 

And  _ something  _ began to nag him at the back of his head. A certain something that he’d tried so hard to forget.

Sadly, before he could even process how  _ messed up  _ it is to have those kinds of thoughts regarding your nemesis, Renjun was snapped out of it when he felt another set of hands, scruffy and cold this time, grabbing him by the collar of his sweater.

“You two! Off the ice!  _ Get off the ice now!!”  _ The rink caretaker’s voice was shrill in panic and exasperation as he used all his might to drag the two of them to the rink’s exit. Renjun was still half-hanging against Jeno’s shoulder when his toe picks landed on the raggedy rubber flooring of the rest area. 

“Both of you are suspended!” He said, pointing his thin index fingers on both Jeno and Renjun’s flushed noses. 

In his intoxication, Renjun could only  _ think  _ of one thing to be a response to that statement:  _ ‘The only thing suspended now is your ass mister’.  _ So, in a burst of bravery so rarely seen outside of his familial and close friend circle, Renjun looked at the caretaker with defiance and said, “suspended how? You’re not even our coach.” 

“For god’s sake,- just stay here!” He yelled and pushed down on Renjun’s shoulder until he was firmly seated on a long bench. The caretaker took an aside glance at Jeno, raised his arms only for a millisecond, before giving up and turning around in an annoyed huff. Because of course, who would be willing to fight against an immovable force? The little, scrawny kid  _ does _ exist only to be bullied for all he cared. “I won’t be responsible for another spine injury!” His trembling, mid-volume scream was only barely heard under Jeno’s simmering laughter.

“He’s fascinating.” Jeno said as he took a seat beside the still dazed Renjun, handing him his blade guards from over the rink’s railing while he took his, “I’m sorry, by the way. Looks like we’re going to miss the ABBA hour.”

“Aw man! Not the ABBA hour!” Renjun flopped, literally, and it caused Jeno to let out a hearty chortle. “I love ABBA…”

“I know, I know…” the awkward, customary condolencing pats caused Renjun to fear asking him  _ how.  _ How could he know? Well, to be fair, who  _ doesn’t  _ love ABBA but still… 

The atmosphere petered out to a chilly stagnancy. No more adrenaline rush meant Renjun lost the fuel needed to make any rash action, even if said action boiled down to nothing more than a casual conversation. Renjun was  _ also  _ reminded of the freshly bruised lump of flesh on his hips, from how it seemed to scream at him with a mouth full of teeth everytime his jeans rubbed against it when he shifted his weight around.  _ That would hurt like a bitch tomorrow _ , he thought. And the worry took his attention away from the conversation happening between them. 

“How’s your training going?”

“Good. You?”

“Good… tricky season ahead?”

“I guess.”

“Same here…”

And… scene. 

Renjun began to fiddle with his blade guards when the tension between them swelled into something that bordered on something physical. A pressing weight against his lungs, and there it is again. A nagging thought. 

He wished Jeno would speak. About their time together before his wretched move. He wished  _ he  _ could speak about it. Confront Jeno about it. Make him face his sins. Answer his earlier question of,  _ “what have I ever done to you?”  _

_ A lot,  _ Renjun thought.  _ A whole damn lot and another one on top of it.  _

But seeing the atmosphere surrounding them, Renjun knew he was asking too much. So he figured he’d just ask Jeno for his permission to leave early, as the idea of a much too firm bed and scratchy blanket is 100% preferable than the chaos on ice in front of them that was threatening to overflow. Though when he peeled his eyes away from his boots, Renjun noticed that Jeno already beat him on his own game. 

He  _ looked  _ like he was about to say something, mouth halfway open and eyes expectantly searching for Renjun’s gaze. But before he could find them, it seemed that Jeno’s attention was piqued by  _ something  _ happening behind Renjun’s back. 

There was a sharp creak coming from behind him, and Renjun automatically turned his head around before Jeno was able to stop him. 

Debauchery. Unadulterated, uncensored, uncalled for debauchery.

_ Those two  _ must’ve thought that the supporting pillars scattered around the rink would give them the privacy they sorely need to act on their… thirst. And even if it failed, shadows would be cast upon their faces and nobody would know whomst… would know which… horny rabbits were  _ sucking  _ on each other's lips during the disco party. 

Well, maybe to the people on the rink they were hidden. But for people sitting on the benches? Lord in heaven above, it would’ve been better if  _ they  _ were to make out  _ right in front of their faces.  _

_ They.  _ A beam of light shone very strategically across their faces and the open secret became less secret and more  _ open.  _

Renjun witnessed, with mouth agape and eyes wide like saucers, the tip of someone’s tongue darting into holes no tongue should go into???? (It’s the earhole, for anyone who’s sick and curious enough.) And some sort of  _ substance,  _ not bile, not even the sip of coke he took not twenty minutes ago, crawled up the back of his throat at the sight of the disturbing scene just like the hives that were picking their way up his shrivelled back in record speed. “ _ What the fuuuuck,”  _ he found himself whispering before he felt strong hands grabbing onto his arm and yanking him away from the rest area. 

  
  
  


“Donghyuk?” Jeno heaved with a crooked grimace once they were safely hidden inside the peace and quiet of the changing room.

“Uhuh,” his confirmation came out together with the sound of a disbelieved giggle.

“AND MARK?!” A visible shiver ran through Jeno and it caused the door he was leaning on to rattle against its frames. He didn’t know why, but the sight of it alone caused Renjun to break out in an uncontrollable laughter. 

“ _ I guess?!”  _ He spat out in between shallow gasps. Jeno was only able to maintain whatever composure he had left for a beat, before he joined Renjun on his breakdown. 

It was found out on that night that people need at least fifteen minutes alone to take off their skating boots if they do it while being riddled with stomach-cramping, knee-slapping laughter. Renjun even had to resolve on pulling Jeno’s left boot off his foot because the latter was too busy rolling on the floor to be able to do it himself. 

Renjun wasn’t even sure  _ why _ the sight of their fellow friends being locked in a disgusting act of sloppy makeout is causing them to crack up this much. He knew it wasn’t funny. It was more… disturbing than anything else. Like catching your parents making out, that was. Or more probably, your cousin hooking up with your sister, or something to the likes of that. 

Still. Even when they were free from the stuffy confines of the rink and were strolling on the refreshing air of a summer night, Renjun and Jeno were still struck with bursts of giggles. 

“Is that how normal humans kiss?” Jeno broke the silence between them with something so silly that it reopened Renjun’s vault of never ending laughter. He resorted to giving Jeno’s arm a light pattering of slaps as a plea for him to  _ stop,  _ but Jeno just proceeded to dig himself deeper with even more absurd statements that themselves were peppered with poor attempts of stopping himself from cracking up. “I saw… way too much tongue.”

They spent their journey poking fun on how Donghyuk  _ ‘seemed to be feeding Mark his saliva’,  _ and speculating the timeline of their relationship, that without them realising it, they'd arrived at their dormitory. 

“God, imagine what Yukhei would say to this.” Jeno amusedly sighed as they were casually strolling to their floor. 

It’s a harmless, joking line. Renjun knew that. But it acted like a blackhole that sucked the airiness they’ve managed to build at record speed. The mood whiplash affected him so strongly that his limbs locked up. He was stuck on the landing with one hand gripping the railings so hard it was shaking. 

“Don’t tell anyone.” Renjun said with his voice so grim and eyes so dark it was hard to believe that joy was present in them not five seconds ago.

A ghost of a smile was still hanging on Jeno’s face when he spoke next, “why? It’s fine, they’re cool,-”

_ “Don’t you dare!”  _ His tone suddenly shot up to a scream and Jeno visibly flinched from it. 

“What do you mean?! It’s a joke! It’s… it’s not that big of a deal!” Later, when he was mulling and regretting all of his life choices as he struggled to fall asleep, Renjun would admit that yes. Jeno was clearly confused. This anger outburst was so out of left field that a panicked, defensive stance was a perfectly understandable thing to take, and that he was assigning so many assumptions to a clueless (well, that part is debatable) party. But at that moment, Renjun was so blinded by the hurt that burst through his heart that he was seeing nothing but red. 

_ “Of course  _ everything is a joke for you!” Renjun yelled, not bothering to decrease the volume of his voice, and he could see that it was making Jeno feel jittery.  _ ‘Good,’ _ he thought. The premise created a cut of a thin smile from his lips. 

“You know… I was wondering why you dared approach me after everything you did,” this time, his voice was nothing but a mere whisper. But it didn’t seem to help with the level of Jeno’s anxiety whatsoever, “that answers it. A joke, hm? Is this also one?” He flicked his fingers to the distance between them, “are you going to run back to your pack and make my life,- no. Wait. It’s worse now! The life of your  _ friends, _ a living hell?” 

“I… I’m sorry, ok? I didn’t mean,-”

“I won’t let it happen.” He snarled, ignoring Jeno’s useless, apologetic babble and jabbing his index finger onto Jeno’s chest. “We were here  _ first.  _ You won’t  _ ever  _ chase us away.” 

After saying his threats, Renjun high-tailed it out of there, practically running to his room and using the entirety of his weight to push the door against its frame. 

The irony of it all.

He could tell that Jeno followed him. Not only from the sound of his shoes tapping unsurely against the tiled flooring, but also from the soft knocks he gave on the door to his room. 

_ “Renjun… come on. Let me explain.”  _

Knocks, again. In increments of five. 

In an effort to fight the guilt that was quickly creeping up his neck, Renjun placed his forehead on the door. He pressed it onto the thin wood so hard something cracked the next time Jeno knocked on it. 

_ “Please… I really didn’t mean to offend you.” _

His chest hurt, more than usual. More than he remembered it to be, and he didn’t know why. It was as if he lost something he didn’t even know he wanted.

Renjun didn’t move from his spot until minutes passed and he could no longer hear, or feel, the tappings of Jeno’s apologetic knocks on his door. 

_ ‘He won’t ever understand, won’t he?’  _ Renjun thought while a bitter smile slowly crawled onto his face.  _ ‘Of course he won’t. What am I to him?’  _

Nothing more but a joke. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello yes markhyuk is disgustingly horny for each other and i love them
> 
> imagine Jeno as a pair skater tho... :DDDD


	4. war horse

“I apologise.”

Renjun sat by the rink for the last quarter of the hockey team’s afternoon training session, only standing up when kids were pouring out of it. He craned his neck and perked up, as if on alert, when his bloodshot eyes met with Jeno’s concerned frown. 

“What I did last night was uncalled for. I’m sorry.” With his head hung low, Jeno’s hockey boots filled his vision and he felt like an utter shit. And not even a pretty shit, while we’re at that. Just a wet pile, baked underneath the searing summer sun after getting trampled by a litter of ponies. 

He couldn’t sleep last night, he woke up late this morning, and his early class was absolutely nightmarish. It seemed as if his body forgot how to do even the basics and he can’t even do a three turn without falling onto his butt. 

Renjun still has it so fresh in his mind the way his coach pulled him to the side and told him, without any effort on softening the blow, that he should  _ get his shit together.  _

_ “Whatever happened last night, sort it out.” _ Sicheng said with one hand placed firmly on his shoulder.  _ “I won’t assign you any ice time until then.”  _

Renjun wanted to scream that it was all his fault for forcing him to join the wretched disco party bullshit. But he swallowed the venom from the tip of his tongue when he looked up and locked his gaze with his coach’s. 

The only person who would gladly drink Renjun’s venom before spitting it back up right to his eyes and blind him for all his efforts. 

So he thought,  _ ‘I’ll just apologise to that monsterfucker.’  _ And give Sicheng a hidden middle finger by skipping his off-ice classes while he’s at it. Easy enough, right?

It should be. The plan was just for him to drop his apology on Jeno’s feet, acceptance not needed, and run as fast and as far away from the hockey posse as humanly possible. 

Well then, he surely didn’t plan for the waterworks to start the moment he finished his seething apology, that’s for sure. 

He didn’t even know that he was crying until he saw a droplet of  _ something  _ splashing against the tip of Jeno’s boots. Even then, he was oddly calm about it. Thinking that it’d be easy to hide from unassuming people with how his hair was splayed in seven different directions across his face. 

Renjun even allowed himself to think that Jeno was in the dark regarding the turn of events. Not for long, though. Because he suddenly felt those dastardly long arms slung across his back in a friendly gesture, before it dragged him away from the crowded rest area to the much more private warming up room. Jeno’s shoulder pads were clanging against his ribs as they walked, and Renjun would’ve usually chastised him for not being mindful. But at that time, he was too busy crying to care.

It was already odd that Renjun allowed it to happen, to put himself in danger of being seen cajoling with a hockey kid. It was odder, then, when he mumbled a hysterical thank you over the swaddle of tissue given to him by a visibly panicked Jeno. Minding his manners in extreme emotional situations. That’s new for him. 

“Are you okay?” He asked when Renjun had recovered enough that his inhale wasn’t riddled with sharp hiccups. 

He only answered with a jerky head shake and proceeded to spend the next five minutes riding another wave of intense swelling in his emotion. “Don’t-t… ask… m-me…  _ if I’m okay!!!”  _ He tacked that sentence on at the very end of his episode. Jeno seemed to understand completely, as he only gave him a quick nod before handing him another leaf of tissue to snatch. 

Thankfully enough, his episode ended soon after, and the room was swallowed into the type of silence that could only be produced inside a soundproofed room. Physically imposing. It was only occasionally cut by Renjun’s soft sniffles. 

It was clear that Jeno could only take one minute of the mind-numbing sensation, as soon enough, Renjun heard an awkward cough coming from his side. “Are you doing anything later?” Jeno came and saved the day, again, when he maneuvered their conversational path and approached the ticking bomb from a safe angle. With a ten foot pole. 

Renjun shook his head at that, “coach Sicheng… wouldn’t allow me t-to touch the ice… if he sees me like this.”

He heard a puff of air being forcibly exhaled and thought that Jeno was jeering at him. 

Oh, how wrong he was. 

Renjun whipped his head up, ready to give Jeno another round of sharp berating, only to see himself being blessed by a smile so wonderful it felt nearly mythical. His scowl did a complete 180 and he ended up exchanging a set of clueless puffy eyes with delicate downturned moons. 

Jeno has smiled at him before, of course. Those icy, dead eyed icebergs that chilled people more than they comforted them. This was different. Disturbingly… different. As in the fact that he shared it with Renjun at that moment felt like the result of a trade off.  _ My truth to your embarrassment. _ It was disturbing because Renjun could sense it, deep within himself, that he’d choose to voluntarily embarrass himself over and over again if it means that Jeno would always smile at him that way.

“I would’ve reacted the same way if I’m banned from the ice, to be honest,” he said, giving Renjun’s back a few encouraging pats. “We’re doing some community classes later, you know, showing local kids the  _ real _ hockey experience,” Jeno continued with that bright smile still lighting up the room and, bit by bit, it also lifted up Renjun’s heart from its pathetic spot down on the gutter, “you should come. It’ll be fun.”

  
  
  


That was how Renjun ended up standing in the middle of a sea of overly enthusiastic 10 year olds, each holding a miniature hockey stick in a painfully inaccurate way. 

Coach Choi zoomed past him with a long tail of little ducklings attached to his jacket’s tail. He gave Renjun an excited wave which he woodenly reciprocated. 

“This is your definition of fun?” He asked Jeno some thirty minutes ago, when the situation was still somewhat under control. 

“It is! Don’t you think so?” Jeno, in his complete hockey regalia, had two kids hanging onto him, one on his arm and another on his back, all three laughing so freely Renjun very nearly, genuinely, sincerely forgave him for everything he’d done right then and there. 

Not so fast though, because Yukhei got ahold of him and excitedly dragged him to the other side of the rink, to a sea of kids that were learning how to do… forward crossovers. 

“I think this is way too advanced for them.” He whispered urgently to Yukhei, who was grinning ear to ear at the sight of children in full winter gear tumbling around like fluffy matryoshka dolls. 

“Let them be, man. Didn’t you also fall like that when you learned crossovers?” 

Touch é.

But nah. 

Renjun couldn’t just stand around when atrocities on basic skating form were being committed left and right. Not on his watch. 

“Do it like this,” he whispered to a boy nearest to him, who’s been visibly struggling to cross his legs for the last five minutes or so. Renjun went ahead and slid his right leg away in a wide arc, before cleanly picking it up the ice and placing it over his left. “Easier, right?”

The kid tried it, and finally succeeded. The excited smile he gave to Renjun was brighter than the waning evening sun itself. 

“Now, lift your toes.” Motivated by the brief flash of energy injected straight to him through his eyeballs, Renjun went to take a more hands on approach by squatting down and using his hand to slowly position the kid’s legs, so that the toe picks of his rented boots wouldn’t snag on the ice when he went to uncross his feet. 

“Kick it away… and put it back at your side. That’s it! Great job!” 

He’s just finished giving the ecstatic boy a high five when Renjun felt several pairs of tiny hands tugging at the back of his shirt so softly it felt like the work of ghosts.  _ Very tiny and very adorable ghosts.  _

“Teach me too please.” A little girl meeped, followed soon by a boy that looked so similar to her they must be twins, “please?.”

Beyond them was a congregation of kidlets who were looking at him with so much hope and innocent excitement it squeezed out whatever amount of bitterness left inside his heart in one, firm, punch. 

_ “Pleeeeeeeaseeeeeee????” _

Renjun looked back at Yukhei for permission, who only responded with a resigned shrug so staged he knew that all this was a set up done by, who else? Jeno. 

Jeno, who was all the way over the other side of the rink, teaching a group of older kids on stick and puck handling, who managed to catch Renjun’s suspicious glare with a quick smile and a wink. 

“That bastard,” Renjun muttered under his breath, but he couldn’t stop a smile from forming onto his quickly warming face. Though, knowing Renjun, he didn’t allow himself to simmer in the cozy, snuggly feeling of a stranger’s kindness for too long. “Yukhei!” Renjun suddenly jumped up to his toes and raised his finger to his  _ beloved gege,  _ who only stood there in shock like a deer caught in headlights.  _ ‘You want to play tricks on me, huh?’  _ he thought, and the smile on his face morphed into something so mischievous even Yukhei understood the implication hidden behind it. 

As if two (three, in this case) can’t play the game.

“Will you please come here and help me demonstrate the moves?” 

  
  


_

The open house -slash- crash course -slash- community class -slash- utter nightmare finally ended and Renjun collapsed to a bench filled with giggling hockey kids the moment he finished sending off the last kid out of the premises. 

“A mess!” YangYang said from somewhere at the back, “yo! Did you guys see how Jisung fell at a slalom?! L O L HE LOOKED SO DUMB!” 

Renjun couldn’t stop a laughter from escaping his bitten lips when he heard a muffled punching sound followed soon by YangYang exaggerated yells. “Serves him right,” he whispered to his giggles. 

“Serves him right indeed.” There was only a sliver of empty space left on the bench, but Jeno didn’t seem to mind when he perched his pretty butt on the ledge. He leaned forward, fiddling to free his elbows and knees from their bulky paddings before he peeked, out and away from the curtain of his damp hair, to Renjun with a unique brand of smile on his lips. 

To see two new types of smiles in a day. Renjun would’ve counted himself as lucky if he was one of those rabid Lee Jeno groupies. He wasn’t. So he made sure that he didn’t care. 

“Feeling better?” 

“I told you to  _ never  _ ask me,-”

“But I didn’t. I asked if you’re feeling better.” Cheeky. His smile, his words, his gestures. They all congregated into a ball of cheekiness so strong it left Renjun feeling slightly exasperated. 

“Yes,” Renjun gave up on whatever grudge was left within him with a loud exhale, “yes I  _ am  _ feeling better. Thanks.”

He stole a glance towards Jeno, and found that he was still staring with a smile that’d mellowed out considerably through their breezy conversation. If someone took the emotion of gladness and painted it as an expression, it would look like the smile he currently had. “Your three turns were beautiful.” 

Renjun scoffed at that. “Wait till you see my spins.  _ They _ are beautiful.” 

“Then show me.” 

A smile sort of popped into Renjun’s face, mirroring the one that Jeno has. But it was quickly sucked out into a pale faced panic once he internalised and understood what was being asked of him. 

“I… I can’t.” Renjun perked up on his seat, and the way that Jeno stood up with a worried frown only made the flash bang of a storm inside his stomach all that much worse. 

And of course the universe decided to pile onto his luck by adding into the mix, the last person he’d like to see at that moment. Walking through the automatic doors to the rink, it was coach Sicheng. 

It was clear that he was there looking for Renjun, and there was even already the start of the sentence  _ ‘what do you think you’re doing?’  _ forming in the way he shaped his lips, but Renjun put it into a screeching halt when he crashed onto him with a full frontal body slam. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” He repeated those two words obsessively, with increasing levels of disgust, as hives began to prickle his skin in droves. 

Jeno was relentless though. He ignored the odd look Sicheng shot at him and the confused murmur of the hockey kids behind him to keep up with his pestering, “why? Come on, Renjun. Please. You have to tell me why!”

_ “You shut up.”  _ He shot Jeno a pointed glare before he continued pouring all his neurosis onto Sicheng’s poor, clueless ass. “I can’t believe I fell for it… oh my god, I can’t believe I fell for his schemes!”

“What happened?” Serving as an oasis of calm and level-headedness between all the chaos and confusion, Sicheng asked, incredulously, to both him and Jeno.

“I only asked him if he wanted to show us his routine. But he... “ Jeno’s sentence fizzled to a quiet end as he gestured towards the jittery Renjun, who was fidgeting like crazy with the drawing cord of Sicheng’s hoodie.

“They’ll laugh at me!” He wailed, so loudly and so suddenly that even the stone-faced Sicheng flinched. It was a good thing, though. Because the shock provided him the initiative to drag Renjun, and in extension, Jeno, out and away from the inquisitive stares of the rest of the hockey team. 

Renjun’s incoherent babbles were unbroken even when they were shielded at the nook of the locker area. Muted from the rest of the world by the tall foam boards on their left and locker pillars on their right. Sicheng was standing in front of him, his arms locking around his in an inescapable cage, and Jeno was blocking his only exit route. He felt so closed in it was a miracle that he didn’t begin hyperventilating. “They’ll mock me! Like how they did before! There! That’s my  _ why! _ Happy?!” Renjun spat his words at Jeno without mercy, and for the second time on that day, his eyes were pricked by the early traces of tears. “This… this is all his idea. Of course! Of course it’s his idea! He’s been waiting for this all this time, huh?! He’s going to… he’s going to make it happen all over again. He,-”

“Have they ever laughed at you?” Renjun’s rambling was cut short when Sicheng grabbed onto his shoulders and gave them a firm shake. His eyes were piercing, involuntarily enacting a terrified whine out of Renjun’s slobbery lips. And his words were so stern even he could sense that Jeno was getting quite intimidated himself. “The kids here. In our current rink.  _ Any kids _ at all, figure, hockey, speed. Have they ever laughed at you?” 

Seeing that Renjun was being uncooperative, what with him squirming and trying hard to avoid his eyes, Sicheng’s palms climbed up in position when he harshly pressed them onto Renjun’s cheeks. It was hard enough that it caused the distressed kid to flinch, and for his eyes to land on the only place they needed to be at that very moment. Sicheng’s calm and composed gaze was a complete 180 from Renjun’s shivering eyeballs, but however much discomfort it brought him then, Renjun couldn’t find it anywhere the will to tear himself away from it. “Come on now. We’ve done this so many times before. Answer me please.”

“Yes, they… they…”

Sicheng squeezed the back of Renjun’s neck when his paper thin composure was threatening to crumble, and it was enough to prevent the house of cards from toppling down hopelessly on the ground. “Have they ever laughed  _ at  _ you, Renjun? Laughing at and laughing  _ with  _ is drastically different, yes?”

“N,-no.”

“No what?”

“No, they’ve never… laughed at me.” Renjun’s eyes darted away from his coach just for a brief second, finding their way to Jeno’s confused, if not slightly worried gaze. He didn’t know if he wanted to scream at him for not remembering anything or for being so clueless it’s malicious. But before he could decide, Sicheng once again gave his cheeks a firm patting in order to regain his attention. 

“Do you think they’ll do it when you skate your program in front of them?” 

“I… I don’t know.” Renjun frantically shook his head, and the first of his second round of tears fell onto his cheeks. Seeping through the firm fingers of Sicheng that felt like his only tangible tether to a realm of sanity. “If I fall… maybe. Maybe, if I fall, they will.” Something. Something. He needed something else to ground him. But what? What? What?

And at his periphery he saw Jeno, slowly flexing his fingers into fists before casting it out into wide, gangly webs. In, and out. In, and out. He did it in a rhythm stable enough that Renjun could use it as a visual cue to start regulating his strained breathing. 

He found it funny, after he was sane enough to once again find things to be funny. Jeno did that as a tick caused by his discomfort. But Renjun reclaimed it to use as a way to regulate  _ his  _ anxiety. 

Could he use this moment to reclaim something else? 

His coach seemed to read his thoughts, because the next time Renjun zoned into their staredown and spoke, a little smile seeped into his normally dour expression.

“But I don’t know.”

“Do you want to know?”

Sicheng’s smile grew, and it filled Renjun, oddly, with shame. Oh, how much did he want to know. How much did he want to make Sicheng proud by being strong, and proving him that he was capable. This person, who single handedly pulled him from the gutter in record time when everyone else failed. Even Jaemin, his first real friend on the rink, with his kind smile and encouraging words, could only get to him after coach Sicheng forcefully built him up with mismatched limbs made out of clay. 

_ ‘Walk first,’  _ Renjun remembered him saying when he was relearning his strokes and nearly gave up because it felt like his legs consisted of two left ones.  _ ‘If you can walk, you can be beautiful later.’ _

“Your brain knows that they’re different.” Sicheng pulled him close and whispered his words straight to Renjun’s ears, as if he knew it was something far too personal to be shared to the world at large. One of his hands vacated its previous spot and found a new lodging over Renjun’s chest. “But your heart, here, on the other hand, can’t tell them apart from the ghosts of your old rink.” He pulled himself away, enough so that he could once again give his unrelenting stare to Renjun. “Avoidance won’t take you anywhere further than here.”

“I know…” Renjun said, allowing himself a hiccup and an exhausted shrug because he was exactly that. Exhausted. “It’s just… it’s so hard, you know?”

“It’s your choice, Renjun. You have to be the one who makes the decision. Not me.” 

He knew that. He knew Coach Sicheng would never force him to do things he didn’t want to, even if said decision frustrated him to all hells. The gritted teeth, the head shakes, the exasperated sighs. Of course, Renjun could read them all and perfectly guess that Sicheng wanted Renjun to do all the things that he always refused. 

It was only because his fear was stronger than his shame, or his desire to be praised, that instead of striving for his dream to be patted on the back with an accompanying smile and whispers of a  _ ‘good job’ _ , he opted for the much easier, much safer bet of being given pitying eyes and careful hugs that made him feel as if his skin was made out of fragile eggshells. His fear has always been stronger than his need to go beyond anywhere he’s been before. 

Not anymore.

“No. No, coach, watch me.” He said as he wiped the collection of tears away from the corner of his eyes. Renjun wanted to show both coach Sicheng AND Jeno (especially Jeno) that he’s no longer the small, defenseless thirteen year old who skated to Swan Lake with feathers all forcibly plucked out of his hand made costume. He’s going to try for that gold medal at the Youth Olympic, god dammit, and if he can’t skate in front of rowdy, brain dead, horny kids who can’t even do proper backward crossovers, then he will never deserve that podium. Not in any lifetimes.

“I’ll do it. I want to know.”

  
  


_

He was alone in the middle of the ice. 

But he wasn’t, really. 

Renjun swept his gaze around the rink and saw numerous familiar faces looking at him with so much curiosity and excitement it's begun to physically suffocate him. 

His fingers felt unusually cold. Stiff. Nearly frost bitten. Like, grown into the size of sausages kind of bad. Which was odd. Because skating, contrary to popular belief, is as hot as a motherfucker. 

Well, the point is, he’s never shivered on ice before. He was doing it then. 

_“Can I borrow the ice?”_ The question seemed to come to his mind like a hazy, decades old memory. And coach Choi’s answer was also too bright and comical that it didn’t help in instilling the sense that _‘oh, it’s really happening’._ At least not until the very first note of his short program music began playing. 

The song started off calm, nearly quiet in its whispers, and Renjun moved his upper body likewise.

But his trembling fingers betrayed the calm facade he was pulling over himself. 

He could see Yukhei from his periphery, hanging onto the railing with a grin on his face. 

_ Laughing with you, he’s laughing with you,  _ he repeated to himself, as Renjun took a sharp breath to ready himself for his triple axel entry. But just as he was about to launch himself upwards, his eyes fell onto a figure standing ominously by one of the pillars. 

Who was it? But the familiar face was blurred before he could pinpoint it to anyone from his memory. 

With his mind being elsewhere, Renjun screwed his landing and felt his palm burn as he tried his best to stop himself from skidding across the ice like a loose puck. 

As soon as he was safely up on his feet, he whipped his head back to the pillar. It was Mark. 

It was only Mark. 

But then YangYang was there too, whispering something to Jisung.  _ Are they… snickering? Are they snickering?!  _

Blood rushed to his ears and it felt as if his world was evaporating into indiscernible images even before he began to do his spins. His music, steadfastly growing up in tempo, was gone to the drummings of his heart, and the ground seemed to swell and contract like the chest of a breathing giant. 

He was losing it. He was losing his grips to reality and he knew that this would lead to nothing else but another life of mockery and shame. 

  
  
  
  


And there was a clap. 

  
  
  
  


Right before he entered into his first spin set, Renjun heard a clap that snapped him out of the confusing blender of emotion that he found himself trapped in. A single, booming clap coming from the direction of the dj booth. 

Coach Sicheng was there, watching over him steadfastly. And Jeno, too, was there. Standing slightly to his left. The expression on his face was so odd that Renjun found himself scoffing in amusement. He had something that was like a combination of worry and disgust. 

He knew he was butchering his routine. Flabby arms flailing off beat to his music and chicken-like sickled feet. 

But that mattered little. Because he caught onto Sicheng’s firm gaze, and once more felt the encouragement he so needed in the most trying two minutes of his life, to date. 

_ “Trust the music.”  _ Those words, a coach Sicheng brand of a mantra, seeped into his mind like a spearhead that liberated his blocked ears with a pop.  _ “Close your eyes. By now, you know where your body should go.” _

And so he  _ did  _ close his eyes, stupidly, when he was doing his sit spin. It caused him to fall on his butt, again, of course. But because of that, there was an involuntary surprised laugh that was forced out of him, and like a domino effect, it brought smiles and laughter to his small audience in ripples. 

_ Laughing with me, they’re laughing with me,  _ Renjun repeated, his smile bitten in determination as he pushed himself back up and got himself ready for the next jump set in his program. 

A triple toe. Come on. It’s his favourite jump. It’s the one where he has a 99% execution rate. He extended his back leg for his entry and…

Did he do it?

_ Did he do it? _

Did he?

  
  
  
  


Of course he did. 

He landed with a dainty  _ paa  _ and chaos exploded all around him like a ruptured pinata. 

Amazing. It made him feel amazing. The hoots and the sharp claps and the shouting of his name was one hundred and eighty degrees different to the reserved, operatic applause bored parents would give during small competitions he frequented in. 

His last jump pass came and went like a breeze, a well executed lutz-loop combo that only helped in increasing the animo of people within the building. 

The only thing left was the crowd pleaser climax, and while down in a besti squat, Renjun raised his arms up like a deranged conductor and motioned for people to start clapping for his last element. A fast, rhythmic step sequence that weirdly enough managed to make the hockey kids bang their heads like they were in a rock concert? (FYI, his short program song was a… new age piano piece with synth elements. NOT something out of a Led Zeppelin setlist or what not.)

It felt nice. Really nice. He even managed to forget  _ why _ he was skating in the first place or  _ what _ made him so adamant to do so when he finally could close his eyes and, to the words of his coach,  _ trust the music.  _

And to the music he trusts. Handing over himself in a silver platter as he snaked and spun and leaped and kicked to the beat of the song, one after another after another. 

A smile was growing on his face, becoming wilder and more uncontained as the song went to its last counts. 

He caught a similar one etched onto Sicheng’s stoic face before he entered his last spin combo, and used it to push for an several extra rotations to his corkscrew spin, causing him to exit it in a stumble as he giggled his way to strike his final pose three beats after the song ended. 

“Amazing! Amazing!” someone (Yukhei) bellowed his praises long before Renjun felt the impact of said person’s whole body colliding against his. It cleanly swept him off his feet and onto his butt and in his head Renjun thought,  _ ‘so this is how it feels like to be body slammed by a plastic michelin man’ _

“Ah,- ahoww  _ gege  _ stop!” Those words, accompanied by the ringing of a bright laughter, flew out of his mouth before Renjun could catch it. Something so sincere, something so… innocent and happy and friendly should never be said to one’s nemesis.

But are they?

Renjun gave the room a quick sweep, and saw nothing more but well meaning kids who were giving him his deserved accolades. Not the same. They were definitely not the same as the ghosts that haunted him from his cursed old rink. 

Mark helped him up to his feet and, together with numerous other kids, gave encouraging pats on his back as he skated his way to the exit panel with an embarrassed but still blindingly bright smile burned into his lips. “Good job,” they said, “it looks really good!” It truly felt like something out of a cheesy Netflix flick.

“I can’t wait to see it in a competition against Chenle’s!” Jisung, that sweet little stick insect of a kid, popped to his vision and said something so sweet Renjun couldn’t help but give his hair another ruffle. He was the sole intended target of it this time. 

They didn’t deserve his irk, either intentional or unintentional. They  _ are  _ different, Renjun noted. Heart and mind finally forging a link that he could physically sense with how his smile was making his cheeks ache. 

“Thank you,” he whispered, after once again giving Sicheng a full frontal body slam of a hug. “I did it.”

“You sure did,” Sicheng replied as he gave Renjun a brief kiss on his hair, easily brushed aside when he pulled Renjun away and gave his arms a fierce rubbing. 

They didn’t deserve Renjun’s grudges. Not at all. They’re just laymen in the battlefield of his psyche. 

And there was only one more duel that he needed to do before he could finally put all his ancient baggage to rest. 

Jeno. Jeno was all that he needed.

The little smile that coach Sicheng let out showed that he understood what Renjun’s intentions were, and he made a silent exit when Renjun gave him a small, reassuring nod. 

Renjun opened his mouth to set the stage for their next battle, but once again, was beaten to it by just a fraction of a second.

“Are you thirsty? There’s an ice cream shop not too far from here. Wanna go?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side-side-side pairing: ChenJi ??
> 
> I feel like I should've titled this story "Kiss & Cry: No More Trauma" but well... you get what you get.
> 
> Useless tidbit about writer heibai: once upon a time she _tried_ to learn figure skating and an element she struggled so much to learn was the three turns.
> 
> ps: I'm contractually obligated to add 1 (one) scene of Renjun crying in all stories I write.


	5. honest to god there won't be even a single michael buble reference in here

They spent fifteen minutes hiking up a steep hill surrounded by the humid summer air and Renjun threatened Jeno, verbally, while struggling to catch his breath, for a no-barred beatdown if their destination turned out to be an old Baskin Robbins whose ice cream selection hasn’t been changed for the last two decades. 

“Of course not,” he only laughed. There wasn’t a trace of physical exertion from how light it sounded and Renjun only grumbled a reminder to do more cardio under his breath. 

Renjun was concentrating so hard on not looking and sounding like a grandpa suffering from a wheezing cough that he completely missed the shop by a whole meter. It wasn’t until Jeno called to him from behind a sliding door covered in sunbleached posters that Renjun realised his blunder.

“Sorry,” he muttered as he scurried into the small shop. Miniscule, even. 

The cool shade provided to him by the low ceilings and loud whirring of an old overhead fan disoriented him for a brief second that when his senses came back to him, Renjun thought he had landed back in time. 

“Oh  _ wow.”  _

He’s been to a lot of novelty vintage cafes in his life but it’s one thing when a millennial entrepreneur tried to replicate the nostalgic charm of the past. A tacky, musty, cramped, completely genuine time capsule stuck in the year of 1987 however, is a completely different beauty altogether.

It wasn’t a false advertisement when he read the faded lettering painted to the sagging awning at the front. This  _ was  _ a milk bar through and through.

“Where did you find this place?” Renjun dazedly asked, attention still fully paid on reading at the display of old menus stuck on the walls. The area displaying the prices has been struck and pasted over with handwritten revisions but it seemed that the owner has stopped bothering to fix it in the late 90s. 

“My aunt lived in this area for a while,” Jeno said as he sat in front of Renjun at the rickety bar table, “she said they have the best root beer float.” 

Renjun scanned through the limited menu with a little hum. He was imagining how great a mint chocolate chip milkshake would taste on his parched tongue when he was hiking up the hell hill. But now that Jeno’s mentioned it… root beer float sounded way too good to be true. 

“Then I’ll have that, please.”

_

The shop has a functioning record player. 

_ ‘Of course there is an old record player!’ _ Renjun thought,  _ ‘how much more cheesy could this place be?’ _

Well, he thought too soon. Because after he dropped their order to the kind shopkeeper lady, Jeno asked her if she happens to have any ABBA records and if so, if she’d be so kind to play it so  _ you can relive your youth together with us two younglings.  _

Cheesy.

“Here you go.” Jeno placed the nearly overflowing jugs of bubbly, sizzling float on the table, while ABBA’s  _ Super Trouper  _ played softly from the far corner of the shop. He gave Renjun a knowing wink as he nodded at the record player, “as an apology for making you miss ABBA hour.”

“Thanks,” was all that he could say, overwhelmed by the perfect atmosphere, his delicious drink, and Jeno’s gesture which he surprisingly found to be just as sweet. Renjun quickly dove deeper into the vat of refreshing soda to prevent Jeno from seeing how flustered he was making him feel. 

Probably ten minutes came and went with them just sitting there in painfully awkward silence, but for Renjun, it felt like hours. The ABBA songs crackled on, and Renjun began to bounce his legs out of anxiety.  _ ‘You were the one who took me here,’  _ he begrudgingly thought,  _ ‘then show me why you took me here!’ _

Renjun was expecting a confrontation! Drama! Anger and grudges being resolved! Then what was Jeno doing just sitting there in silence, reading an old cooking magazine from the cafe’s tall pile of dusty reading materials? 

But he didn’t do anything to turn the tide around because…….

(Well because he secretly enjoyed the peaceful time they have together, of course. It’s been far too long since they have one.) 

(Eight years worth of  _ too long. _ ) 

Renjun wanted to pull up his phone to help him go through the druge of their excursion, but only remembered that he’d left it behind inside his training bag back at the rink’s locker when he reached into his pocket and found it empty.  _ Curses.  _

“Is it nice?” Jeno broke the thick silence between them with a simple question and Renjun nearly choked on a chunk of vanilla ice cream when he went to answer it.

“Y… yeah it’s really tasty.”

“Vanilla is my favourite,” he said, afterwards spooning a big heap of ice cream into his mouth.

“Uhh… same.”

“By the way, have you ever skated to ABBA?” Jeno asked. He really was steering their conversational path like a deranged mountain drifter. 

“Uh… not yet… I’m hoping sometime in the future coach Sicheng will allow me to.”

“That’s bull,” he huffed with a gaping mouth, “he should let you choose whatever music you want!” 

“Yeah well… he said what we like isn’t always translatable on ice.” Like that one time when Donghyuk was dead set to skating to Darude’s Sandstorm in the hopes of going viral on twitter… aka the worst season Donghyuk ever had to date. (Sicheng didn’t deny him because some types of kids learn best by being allowed to drink the awful concoction they thought was delicious.)

Ever since then Donghyuk has been keeping up with his good behaviour everytime discussion about song choices came up.

Jeno took a while to recover from his hearty laughter after hearing Renjun’s tale, and all of a sudden, before his giggles even came to an end, Jeno swiftly reached out and took Renjun’s hands from their fidgety stance on the table. He pulled them towards him before flipping them this way and that in a way that poorly masked his premeditated move with cheap nonchalance. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I thought there would be cuts,” he said, before placing Renjun’s hand back on the table with an exaggerated huff. “You took quite a nasty fall.” 

Renjun has another question though. Only this time, he didn’t have the gall to voice it. But it was still there, gnawing at his brain all the same. 

_ ‘Why the  _ fuck  _ is he still holding my hand.’  _

“I’m not made of paper.” He scoffed. 

And that’s true. As coach Sicheng said, if you ain’t seeing white, it ain’t bad. 

But enough about his actually-hellish training regiment. This moment was so precious for Renjun, and he wasn’t going to waste another second of it dilly-dallying like a lazy courtesan. 

Renjun knew that _this thing_ happening between them wasn’t actually about concern between two well meaning athletes, and god forbid, it wasn’t a cheap attempt at flirting. No. This was a battle of dominance. _This_ was his chance at finally getting the upper hand on Jeno. 

And so he did. Literally. 

Renjun flipped their still entwined hands over and leaned forward far enough that his weight was tangibly pressing onto Jeno’s open palm. 

“Why? Worried that I got hurt?” 

The crack of a fluster on Jeno’s chilly glass mask brought a smile to Renjun’s face. He could really learn to love doing this. “What would you do if I really  _ did  _ get hurt, hm? Pay for my medical bills?”

“Maybe,” Jeno sighed, wiggling his overturned fingers like the feet of a cockroach high on insect repellent. “For sure, I guess. I did promise myself that I’ll take care of you.” 

“Oh?” Renjun hated that his voice just had to crack at such a critical moment. It completely betrayed the panic that had begun to seep into his heart which was, of course, beating furiously. 

The first side of the record has just finished playing and silence engulfed them when the lady went to flip the record over. Soon enough, ABBA’s  _ Happy New Year  _ started playing and Renjun dreaded the song that would come next.

“It would’ve been partially my fault after all.” Jeno said as he once again picked up their hands, seemingly not caring that they were entwined, before placing the back of Renjun’s hands against his cheek before leaning earnestly into it. 

_ ‘Where is this going?’ _ Renjun wondered,  _ panicked,  _ as he could feel the confident smile on his lips slowly congealing up into a rigid mass of boiled flesh. 

Is it a game? Is it a trick? Will Jeno pull the rug from underneath his bum the moment Renjun bit into the bait? Was this how he treated everyone close to him? Was this how human beings are supposed to act, and it was Renjun who’s at fault here for being a closed off prude who thought that a few cheeky actions are the equivalent of romantic flirting?

_ Does this mean… oh god. Does this mean he really is flirting with me? With me???? _

“Who… who gives you the right?” The words flew out of his lips before Renjun was able to stop them, and the regret of what such blunder might entail to their precarious relationship hit him with such a force it shamed him. 

Shame, because it showed how flimsy his resolve was.

He came into the evening with the goal of forcing an atonement from Jeno,  _ not  _ to be smitten by a mere smile and cheesy actions.  _ ‘How weak am I?’  _ He thought,  _ ‘a handsome pickpocket could ask for my wallet and I would’ve handed it to them with a kiss on my cheek in return.’ _

But thankfully for Renjun, his thought process has skipped like, three different conversational hurdles that they have yet to have, that Jeno failed to follow and only cocked his head in confusion in response to his outburst, “nobody? I don’t think you’ll be able to fight me off if you’re stuck to your bed with an injury.”

“How nice of you. All for me?” Renjun interjected the way their conversation was going with a dose of sarcasm. 

But Jeno’s response was so genuine, like he was  _ genuinely  _ answering Renjun’s question at its face value, that it hit him with the power of a cleanly delivered suckerpunch to the underside of his jaw. 

“Yeah. Because I like you. Do you not like me?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


Perfectly in character with him being the butt monkey of the universe, the cafe’s ancient record player suddenly skipped to a halt, and Renjun was rendered silent for a good two minutes. 

The game of _ is he or is he not  _ branched out and grew into something akin to a ten layered conspiracy theory that at one point, the program crashed. 

Head empty, no thoughts. 

Renjun only sat there, staring at Jeno with glazed eyes and a factory-default smile until his hardware finished doing its reboot and he managed to form some coherent words with his stiff lips. 

At the same time ( _ of course _ ), the shopkeeper lady was finally successful in getting her record going again, and  _ Last Summer,  _ the dreaded song, began to play as the backing track of his impossible life. 

“The  _ audacity… _ ” Renjun huffed in amazement. He could see that Yukhei has really left a deep imprint into the way these impressionable youths carried themselves in the world. With confidence as tall as the Namsan tower. But however much he wanted to act as if he didn’t like Jeno’s unsolicited affection, he couldn’t betray the sweet, little smile that began to bloom on his blushing face. 

And he hated himself even more for it. 

“Are you done?” Jeno pointed with his free hand at Renjun’s glass of float.

“Obviously.” The glass’ been empty for the last ten minutes and it was magic that Jeno only realised  _ then.  _ So what did he think was the meaning behind the loud sucking noise that Renjun’s been making to fill any moment of awkwardness between them? Deliberate torture?

“I read online that there’s a summer festival at the city’s town hall. Wanna go?”

Jeno said it as a question, but Renjun had the gist that he didn’t have any choice in deciding the outcome. Because he was looking at Renjun with so much excitement and hope in his eyes that even if he wanted to say  _ no  _ to him, he couldn’t. 

He’s not  _ that _ evil. 

“Yeah, let’s go. Why not.”

“I’ll pay. You get ready.” He said, patting the back of Renjun’s hand so firmly it blushed when Jeno  _ finally _ let them go. And his cheeks, too, blushed. Even more furiously than before. 

Renjun stared at his open palm with an empty stare that undersell the brewing storm of bewilderment hiding behind his eyeballs. Warm, flushed, quickly returning to its curled up state as if his fingers were seeking the mass that should’ve been AND should’ve never been there. 

He done did himself some good ol’ fashioned goof by being defeated in his own game that he never knew was only played all by himself.

Well, it was his fault for reading the situation wrong. 

God forbid, Jeno  _ was  _ really trying to flirt with him. Curses. 

  
  


_

Turns out, the city hall's summer festival was part of a lot of, if not all, people's plan to spend their evening. Even at the gates Renjun was greeted by a swathe of students, be it figure, speed, or hockey alike.

" _ Gege!!"  _ YangYang waved at him from a nearby odeng stall. Suspicious. Seeing  _ König Yangyang _ refer to him with an honorific could only mean one thing.

"Did you come here with the girls?" He asked his shameless question to Renjun in a comical stage-whisper.

Hidden beneath his disgusted, exasperated sigh was Jeno's giggles, and Renjun lazily refused the steaming cup of skewered fish cake that Yangyang must've bought him as a form of dowry.

The audacity for him to think that his female comrades are only worth a cup of cheap odeng…

"I came with Jeno."

"Oh," he said, visibly deflating in disappointment, "that's lame."

"Ask Donghyuk if you want a referral," Renjun pried himself away from YangYang's snake-like arms and shooed him away to god knows where, odeng cup still in his hand.

While giggling and shaking their heads in morbid awe, they both wormed themselves deeper into the modestly crowded alley flanked shoulder to shoulder with tiny, colourful food stalls that were selling wild assortments of sweet and savoury options. Anything you wish for, they'll probably have a pulled cart filled to the brim with it.

The sky above them was now the colour of a maple tree in autumn. Red, yellow, and oranges projected onto popcorn-like clouds with the occasional deep blue peeking through. It seemed that Jeno was affected by their surroundings, because he excused himself to the side and got them both chocolate covered strawberry skewers with popcorn sprinkles.

"Are all your kind like that?" Renjun finally asked when they reached a quieter part of the alley, taking the opportunity to sit at a closed storefront to enjoy their snack. 

Jeno joined him, snorting out his amusement before saying, “I’m not like that, am I?”

“You literally said you like me  _ literally  _ twenty minutes ago.”

“And you believe it?”

He's forgiven and acknowledged Jeno’s effort enough that miraculously, his brain didn’t devolve into a triple-deckered worth of conspiratory muck where he believed that Jeno was trying to sabotage him when he heard those precarious words. Renjun  _ understood  _ that Jeno said it in a way that conveyed his disbelief. Like,  _ ‘wow! I have a chance!’  _ kind of thing. But still. Renjun was feeling like playing a little bit with Jeno’s delicate heart that he decided to act as if his sentence implied that Jeno was a player toying with his emotion. A small payback for when he was being an active accomplice for those people who ruined his  _ own  _ delicate heart. 

He just gave Jeno an unamused beat of a pout, before leaping to his feet and booting away from their spot. Renjun could hear Jeno calling out for him in panic, and it brought an embarrassingly wide smile on his face. 

Renjun hoped that he could erase the smile before Jeno caught up with him, but the life of someone with shorter legs is hard, isn’t it? Because he hasn’t even passed 3 food stalls before Jeno grasped him on his shoulder and spun him around. 

There was an endearing image of worry and fear on his face before it was quickly swept with a wave of relief when Jeno saw the extent of Renjun’s giddiness at pulling a successful prank on him, “for god sake Injun…” 

Before that day, the knowledge that he could instil such concern in Jeno would’ve brought a sort of sick satisfaction to Renjun’s cold, dark heart. But then, it only sobered him up, enough that it mellowed out his joyful grin into just a simple smile. “Let me treat you with dinner,” he said while giving Jeno’s forearm a friendly pat. 

Renjun slipped out of his hold before Jeno was able to rebuke his offer, pretending to not hear his  _ buts  _ and  _ pleases _ as he made his way to a grilled chicken skewer stall. 

His hand was draped over the spot where just seconds ago Jeno was holding him, and he thought,  _ ‘he really is trying to repent, isn’t he?’  _

It was the only thing he ever wanted, and his body seemed to be minutely vibrating from the combination of hope and fear alike. Hope for closure, and fear that somehow, someway, his luck would run dry and something would ruin this paper house they’ve been building way faster than they could ever hope to mend it again.

But when he was ordering their dinner, and Jeno appeared beside him with so much enthusiasm as he went to town with his order, Renjun tried his best to ignore all that. His anxieties, and the nightmare that happened between them in the past eight years.

He hung to Jeno’s sincere smile, which only then he realised he’d seen before, a memory that was awakened after he heard Jeno call him with his childhood pet name that’s been so long unspoken. 

_ ‘He still remembers.’ _

  
  


_

“Yuzuru Hanyu’s……. butt.” 

They were walking back from the festival, crawling up and down the hilly city scape with giggles and stomachs that were cramping up from ingesting way too much food and a soft serve ice cream on top. 

And of course, to pass the time, Jeno decided that they should start playing a silly game called  _ ‘my favourite things’. _

“Hmm… I like how Brent Burns looks like a toothless beaver.”

“That’s a weird favourite… then I’ll say… the height difference between Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot.”

The night has been picture perfect, up until that point. Dinner, then dessert, then a massive congregation of their skating club together with their respective coaches watching the fireworks show while sitting on a green patch of grass (which they only realised has a  _ ‘please don’t step on me’  _ plaque the moment they all stepped out of it). 

Renjun was introduced to all of the hockey team and YangYang finally got to live his dream of conversing with the female members of their club. 

Most of the team decided to continue the  _ ‘still young night’,  _ as said by coach Choi, elsewhere. Probably a PG version of a bar, which would end up to be some 24 hours chinese restaurant somewhere near the business district. But Renjun has something else in mind, and  _ more food _ (or sleep, the other thing that caused smaller clusters of people to separate from the main group) was not it. 

He asked Jeno earlier if he was game with breaking into the closed rink to help their poor stomach digest the plethora of junk food and also to clock in some extra ice time while they’re at it. If Jeno gave his answer any faster, he would’ve had to say it  _ before  _ Renjun asked him the question.

“Wait,” Jeno said, stopping a few steps behind Renjun just as they were approaching the rink’s back door, “you have the keys?”

Renjun answered by raising his arm high. There, hanging around his middle finger was a bundle of keys whose jingles were bright against the stagnant summer air. “Took it from the caretaker’s pocket yesterday,” he said as he carefully tried several keys to see which would open the back door, “I didn't know what I wanted to do with it initially, but now I’m glad I did it.”

Jeno was silent for long enough that Renjun’d began to worry that he might not approve of his illegal act. But just when he was about to turn around to check on him, Renjun heard a laughter ringing from behind him that was not unlike the jingling of keys on his hand. Bright, light, and easy. 

Jeno swooped in on his right, pointed at the oldest-looking key of the bunch, and breathlessly said, “try that one. It looks the part.”

And indeed, it was.

  
  


_

An empty rink at night was oddly… beautiful.

Well, yes. The walk from the back rooms, past the dark maintenance corridor with its blinking red buttons and rows of empty lockers that creaked and groaned no matter how carefully they treated those rusty hinges was creepy as all hell, but the rink itself was alright. 

Okay. Alright was a severe understatement. 

Silver shine of the full moon flowed into the hall from windows up by the ceiling. They were bright enough that they illuminated the fine mist hanging low on the ground, making everything look as if they were covered in rolls of cloud of a lazy winter morning. 

Greeted by the sight, Renjun and Jeno couldn’t seem to tie their boots properly that night, even if all they ever wanted was to magically pop them on and frolic inside the fairy realm that awaited in front of them. Blame it on trembling fingers that were ironically caused by their excitement, or maybe, how they couldn’t seem to stop sabotaging the other by pulling on arms and nudging legs away with an accompaniment of childish giggles, but it took them nearly ten minutes to lace their boots up before they raced to see who could be the first to step their blades on the virgin ice. 

Renjun did, of course. Because he was not shy about doing some cheating and instead of patiently fiddling with the latch of the swinging door, which Jeno mistakenly did, he frog leaped the barrier clean and landed on the ice with a proud  _ pop.  _

His joy in winning made Renjun spin around without care or needed preparation. And sure enough, it caused him to fall flat on his bum. His giddy laughter rose up to the darkened ceiling like the swirls of cold mist that formed around him in ringlets. 

He’s never felt that free in such a long time. 

Jeno approached him while comically shaking his head in exaggerated disdain. Nevertheless, he still reached out his hand to help Renjun up with a smile on his face. “Didn’t we also use to race to be the first on the ice after every ice coating,” he said as he playfully pushed Renjun along the side of the rink. 

“That was so long ago,” Renjun answered with a chuckle, “we used to play tag, remember? Before our lessons started.” 

Jeno clapped his hands in excitement when, like Renjun, old memories of their childhood flooded his vision in washed out, gold-tinted film, “your coach used to hate me so much! What’s her name? Miss Lee?” Though as if the world would like to remind them that gravity still exists and no object could float for so long without crashing down to the ground, Jeno’s words lurched out of his mouth faster than he could think and gave Renjun a headshot. With such an unneeded, unforeseen, and uncalled for reminder, his face instantly darkened into an expression so bleak that only his shaking eyes were seen when they stopped beneath the shadow of one of the rink’s pillars. 

“Renjun, I,-”

He stopped Jeno from an unnecessary embarrassment with a quick handwave. It wasn’t his fault for remembering it. Renjun prompted the recollection anyway, albeit he too did it accidentally. Besides, didn’t he, only earlier, make a resolution that he will no longer be haunted by the ghosts of his past? 

This was him fighting, and he was determined to win.

“I’m planning to skate to this next season.” He stopped in front of the DJ booth and rummaged around a tiny hole cut to the side of the box for the audio jack that  _ must  _ be there somewhere. The curse of having short arms… 

Jeno, seemingly noting his effort of keeping the air light between them, scoffed and told Renjun to move aside so he could do the deed himself. 

“Your own song choice?” The perks of having long arms… took him less than 5 seconds to pull the cord out and hand it to Renjun. “ABBA?”

“You do know that a person can like more than one musical artist, right?”

Jeno laughed at that, and Renjun followed suit. “I know coach Sicheng wouldn’t say no to this.” To Jeno’s yet unsaid  _ ‘why?’  _ Renjun went on to elaborate, “his favourite skater skated to this song once.”

He has searched his song, typed the title on the search bar, pulled it up so the artwork took up nearly all of the surface of his phone. All he needed to do was to just tap on the small play button for it to blast all around the empty rink. It was just the matter of him getting over his nerves and commanding his trembling thumb to push on that god damned  _ song. _

“Give me the phone.” Jeno suddenly said, breaking the stupor that he unknowingly slipped into. “Go to your position. I’ll handle it.” 

Renjun felt slightly guilty that he allowed himself to stall long enough that Jeno had to intervene. But then, soon enough, common sense returned and he realised that it would be impossible for him to start the song and start his routine  _ at the same time.  _

_ “It’s okay to accept help. Only if you really need it.”  _

Coach Sicheng’s phantom wisdom echoed within his skull and it brought Renjun to a grimace. He really couldn’t shake his coach away from his life. Even when he’s not there… he  _ is.  _

Renjun skidded to a stop at the center of the rink, and gave Jeno a sure nod to signal that he was ready. 

The speakers crackled to life, and the first few notes lilt out of them in calm waves. Jeno, bless his soul, had the hindsight to adjust the speakers’ volume to ensure that the song was soft enough that nobody from the outside could hear, but loud enough that the piano notes still could bounce and echo around the empty structure. It made everything feel 100 times more eerie than they were before. 

Renjun began to move, rolling his head to the start of the song, and he was instantly glad that he chose to do the ballad cover of it. Because he couldn’t really imagine himself skating to an electric disco dance tune in the atmosphere that surrounded them.

An outright illegal attempt at skating inside a magical winter wonderland. 

The night was so still, and Renjun felt like he was one with the tune. Every beat of choreography came to him so effortlessly. And how could they not? When every move caused the fog to move in accordance to his body. Every arc he did with his arms, every flick of his wrist, even a mere twirl of his fingers, they all caused a physical change to his surroundings and Renjun couldn’t get enough of it. 

He was finally living his fantasy of being a master of elemental bending arts.

There was only him, then. The crisp sound of blades cutting through the ice and his music, which little by little has begun to disappear into his ears and merged together with his body. 

And Jeno, too. At the side. Watching over him. Mouthing together the lyrics of the song which were often broken into smiles when Renjun cleanly executed tricky elements of his self-made routine. 

It made him confident enough to attempt a jump pass. A simple double flip. But still, even when Renjun safely landed it with a flourished arm movement, he could see the tinge of panic in Jeno’s eyes, and in his body that tensed up, propelling himself slightly away from the barrier. 

_ What a perfect opportunity, _ he thought. The next time Renjun made a close pass in front of Jeno, he made sure to reach out and grab him firmly on his wrists, guiding him closely behind until they were back to the spot where he first started. 

“What are we doing?” He asked, and it was the first time in Renjun’s life that he’s ever seen Jeno be flustered. So much so that there was a visible blush at the apples of his cheeks. 

“Moving to the music,” Renjun responded, a cheeky smile accompanying more of his tuggings as he took Jeno on an easy lap around the rink. “Come on! I know you still watch figure skating religiously. Show me what you got!”

They tried to do side by side twizzles (and failed spectacularly). Jeno assisted Renjun on doing a Y spiral by pushing him along the perimeter of the ice. They tried to do another throw, an easy assisted loop, and laughed to the high heavens when it was Jeno who facedived onto the ice when he lost his balance after finishing his half-hearted yeet. 

But it was only when they were synchronising their strokings to the beat of the music, swaying through the mist like a small boat would on a calm sea, that Renjun heard a sweet giggle escape from Jeno’s mask of concentration. 

“What is it?”

“It’s kinda ironic,” he said as he leant closer, resting his chin lightly on Renjun’s shoulder while his palm glided away from his waist to settle dangerously low on his stomach. “The song said  _ dancing on my own _ but here we are.”

“Cheesy,” Renjun let out a courteous laugh at Jeno’s observation and gave the back of his hand a few taps, “do you think you can lift me? Just a simple Simba lift.”

He looked over his shoulder and was met with crooked, questioning eyebrows. “Of course, but are you sure?”

Renjun only shrugged to that, “why not. Wait for my cue.” 

He kept tapping on Jeno’s hand for seven counts, and said his  _ ‘now!’  _ when the music swelled for its emotional climax. 

Jeno lifted him securely with his palms flat around his waist, and he achieved lift off with such ease that it looked like he wouldn’t even notice if Renjun was suddenly replaced with a pillowcase filled with goose feathers. 

It was Renjun who was, figuratively, losing his shit. Laughing and hooting as he flew above the sea of mist in a dream that he’d finally make true. 

But the laughter was quickly traded with a panicked yell when Jeno suddenly flipped him around and caught him in the brink of a massive pile up. He had Renjun by his armpits, and their faces were separated only by the mercy of Renjun’s rapid exhales. 

“Finish the song,” Jeno whispered as his nose scrunched up into a smile, and he put Renjun back down on the ice before he could even say one word of protest. Jeno gently pushed Renjun away to do just that. Finish the last bars of the song with the spin combo that he loved to do so much. 

When he went low for a sit spin, he opened up a circle of clarity around him, the cloud bundling up in a tight border around his legs. And when he went upright, gradually extending his arms to the ceilings to finish his combo, they rushed in on him. Climbing up his limbs in ethereal silver coils that shot out of his outstretched fingers. 

Time seemed to stretch together with the song’s last note. Everything that’d happen, everything that will, they all filled him with a bittersweet sense of longing for something that’s only ever almost his. Renjun reached further to the night sky, to the patch of darkness hidden behind a grimy layer of the ceiling glass. It felt so near. Something. Anything.  _ Please give to me the dream I never knew I’d wanted so very dearly. _

And it was over. 

Renjun took a completely exaggerated bow to the tune of Jeno’s animated clappings before he sped back to his side. “So! what do you think?!” Renjun bursted in excitement as he made a stop to his movement by completely crashing his body against the barrier. “I know it’s not perfect yet and uh… It’s rushed! There are a lot of repetitions and it’s unimaginative and,-”

“It’s beautiful.” 

He was shocked to silence. Standing there, regretting that he forgot about his bruised hips until the second it collided against the barrier, and he didn’t even have the bravery to look up and decipher the meaning of Jeno’s words. The weight of the atmosphere, combined with the drummings of his racing heart, settled inside his head. Pulling it lower and lower, not stopping until his chin was tucked securely against his neck. 

“Beautiful, just like the skater.”

“You  _ shut up.”  _

It felt good to be wanted, to be liked. Heck, he could already feel a prickle of negative energy crawling up his nape, just from knowing of the potential grudge of thousands of Jeno’s groupies directed at him for the fault of just  _ being.  _ But Renjun couldn’t really enjoy this beautiful night because a certain  _ something _ was still nagging him at the back of his head. 

And it seemed that a similar thought was riddling Jeno all the same. 

Jeno’s light giggle came to a halt and from where he was, Renjun could see that Jeno was fidgeting with his hands from the clacking of his nails, and his fingers wiggling like the appendages of a five-legged spider. So, Renjun knew that something was coming the moment he pulled them all in into a tight fist. 

Something good? Something bad?

Either way, it was something that completely pulled both of them out of the ethereal dream world and into harsh reality.

A reality that they both were finally ready to face head on. 

“I want to… apologise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter should be titled 'im sorry for being so self indulgent' but instead I fooled you because there _is_ 1 (one) michael buble reference in this chapter. Have fun finding it. 
> 
> I wrote this chapter fueled by my disappointment (but complete understanding) of the cancellation of Worlds 2020. We were promised Two Men in Love!!! On a world stage!!! But anyways, as an homage to the end of the super fun 2019/2020 season, I based my description of Renjun's future free skate (FS) to one of my favourite routine of the season, Shoma Uno's FS to Calum Scott's rendition of Dancing on My Own aka the best soundtrack for a real life redemption arc ever.
> 
> Yall someone should make a Shoma Uno docudrama because he's been living in one in this 19/20 season.


	6. the jump is under rotated but we pretend not to see because we like you

Renjun was once again shocked to silence after hearing Jeno’s long overdue request for forgiveness.

But what was first only an involuntary response to a surprising turn of events, quickly morphed into something… borderline malicious. Because Renjun kept his silence even when he knew he already had full control over his mouth-and-tongue area, and left Jeno essentially for dead. 

“I… I just… uh…” Jeno’s stutter grew worse the longer Renjun left him to struggle on his own. All awkwardness and no class. He knew he was being mean, but this has been something he’d prayed for the last four years. Won’t you let him enjoy it?

“I… I want to say sorry.”

Renjun looked up, because up at that point, he was feeling quite generous. He found Jeno’s gaze without having to search for it. How the tables have turned. Jeno had a panicked, unsure, nearly terrified look on his face, and he visibly flinched when a bright grin suddenly popped onto Renjun’s face. 

“For what?”

_ ‘Is this how I usually look?’  _ Renjun found himself wondering when he saw how Jeno was shuffling around on his blades, fingers curled and fidgety as they must’ve grown so numb they felt more like uncooperative sausages than a living human limb.  _ ‘How pathetic.’ _

Seemingly not being able to contain the uncomfortable energy between them any longer, Jeno suddenly took off in a quick sprint around the perimeter of the rink. But not before mumbling a still barely audible whisper of his admission.

_ “You know for what…” _

It was vague, yes. And if this happened before Renjun’d partially gone through his protagonist's healing journey and sensed the honesty of Jeno’s actions, he would’ve cornered him behind the most shadowy pillar and demand Jeno to elaborate while pressing the blade of his own boots on that pristine neck of his.

It  _ was  _ vague, but Renjun understood completely what he was referring to. 

Between them, there has only ever been one big mistake that Jeno has to repent for anyway.

“Is that it? You think that’s enough?” Renjun said when he finally caught up with Jeno’s frantic skating. From the way his fists impossibly tightened in their clenchings, he knew he’d struck a chord inside of Jeno’s conscience. “I had to move, remember? I moved to another city because of what you all did. You think a sorry is enough?”

Renjun knew he was tempting fate. He knew he was playing with fire, and his daring smile faltered for a fraction of second. Knowing full well that one wrong push would be more than enough to topple the balance and cause him to come up victorious as the one asshole in this nightly interaction. Just like last night, and the countless days prior where he would dodge Jeno’s attempt at striking a conversation using silence so cold they scalded. 

He could say one wrong thing and push Jeno to his breaking point where he would’ve known, then, that he never should’ve bothered with any of his remorse. That Renjun never deserved his apology. 

Maybe he wanted that to happen. Because something final, albeit painful, is much preferable than an uncertain struggle, isn’t it?

But Jeno, bless his heart, stayed. 

Maybe he saw past Renjun’s attempts at self-sabotaging his own life and persevered, out of the purity of his heart. Or maybe he was too dumb to read past the lines and decided that once he’s dug his heels to the ground, might as well stay, right? Surely, spending too much time with the likes of Yukhei and YangYang  _ must’ve  _ done something to his social comprehension level. But whatever caused it, one thing was clear. 

Jeno wasn’t going anywhere. Not until they’ve tidied up after their nearly-a-decade long unfinished business. 

Jeno skidded to a sudden stop, and with one easy tugging of Renjun’s arm, forced him to do so too. His hands were firmly placed on Renjun’s shoulders and no matter how hard he tried to wiggle himself out of it, they didn’t budge. It was as if Jeno was asking him to not go anywhere and to just wait, for once. Just a little. At least until he found the courage in himself to raise his head and meet Renjun’s gaze head on.

“Then tell me what to do. I don’t know… I don’t know what to do.” He said. His red rimmed eyes seemed to reflect the silver of the moon and Renjun nearly pardoned him of all sins right then and there. 

But no. He has to stay strong,  _ for mother!  _

Okay. Joking aside, he knew he had to do this for himself. And if he’s being unselfish for once, for Jeno too. As it was the perfect moment for him to teach Jeno one thing or two regarding owning up to your mistakes. 

He shook the not-yet-needed dose of kindness with a quick tilt of his head and asked, “well, for starters, do you  _ understand  _ what they meant when they called me…  _ that?”  _

Jeno began to squirm in discomfort, and it was Renjun’s turn in trying to prevent him from running away, once again, in a frantic sprint by placing his hands over Jeno’s shivering arms. His condition got significantly worse when Renjun spelled his…  _ pet name  _ in an exaggerated drawl. 

Jeno avoided Renjun’s gaze when he nodded his head, seemingly unable to face him while a wave of fresh shame overwhelmed him in one fell swoop. 

“Say it.”

Renjun was relentless in his drilling, using a burst of impulsive fervor and his index finger to tilt Jeno’s head upward and locking their eyes together as he demanded Jeno to do what he said.

(Yeah. Okay. He  _ was  _ playing with fire but what could he do? The sensation of it licking at his fingers was too good to be abandoned.)

But still, even with that, there was only silence. The fear in his eyes was so palpable Renjun could nearly taste it.

“Come on, say it to my face, Jeno. For old time’s sake.”

It must’ve been so hard for Jeno to do so, because it took him one bite of his lips, two big gulps of strained breaths, and three firm pats on Renjun’s shoulder before he could squeeze the words out of his deathly pale lips.

“… gay. In a bad way.” 

His voice broke when he said those words, and Renjun couldn’t help but burst out in a jolt of laughter that came so out of left field that it clearly left Jeno feeling terribly confused. Because when he slipped away from Jeno’s hold in the brief moment where his grip loosened, still giggling like a madman, he caught a glimpse of a panicked expression that implied that maybe, finally, Jeno understood what it felt like to lose the entirety of his  _ shit. _

Well, let him stew inside his excrement for a little while, shall we?

“I can… I can tell the kids to stop calling you that from now on!” He stuttered, in terror, as he tried to catch up with Renjun. 

“That’s not the point!” Renjun snickered, and in the same breath shaking Jeno away from his arm and zooming out to the center of the rink. “You  _ knew  _ how I felt about that name, and yet when… when you first saw me again,-”

Renjun stopped suddenly in the middle of his sentence. And he too stopped suddenly in the middle of his sprint. 

He could hear Jeno’s surprised gasp, and he could feel a spray of fine ice raining down on his back when his blades scraped to a halt just mere centimeters away from him. They didn’t bother him. They didn’t bother him at all.

Because all Renjun wanted was to catch him by surprise. He wanted to know, for sure this time, if Jeno’s genuineness was real or if everything up to this point has just been a cruel joke. Yes, because even after all that's happened, Renjun still couldn’t believe that life has finally allowed him to breathe. And so he would test it, and test it, and test it over and over again, until his brain and his heart were coexisting inside the same dimension. He didn’t even care that his obsessiveness could lead to him breaking their shared bridge beyond comprehension. Break it, if he has to. He’d rather live his life in isolation than to share a forced camaraderie with a liar. 

But that wasn’t the full extent of his truth and he  _ knew it.  _

Because he  _ wanted _ it to be a lie. He wanted all this to be a sick joke. Because beneath everything, Renjun wanted to still be fearful of his past. And only a lie would allow him to do so. 

Fear, which he could then so easily turn into anger.  _ Anger is good, _ he always thought.  _ Anger is power. _ He wanted to be angry at himself for not doing anything about what happened to him, he wanted to be angry at everyone else for brushing everything under the rug so easily. How instead of standing up for himself, he tucked his tails between his legs and ran away like a coward. Being angry made him feel as if he still had a fighting chance against the ghosts of his past. The idea of letting go felt more like a… defeat. Like a silent march to the dark. 

He wanted to be right. Because if he was wrong, then that meant he’d wasted years of his life living a lie.

It was then awful when he swivelled his body around and saw that  _ face, _ the one that was still adorned with an expression so honest Renjun felt like cursing the world to a fiery end. Because the realisation that he’s been campaigning a one sided war against  _ that  _ caused a steel ball to materialise in his mental scape, breaking down his flimsy protective walls in one, merciless swing. What was then the use of everything?

He was wrong.  _ He was oh so very wrong. _

Jeno, who was standing just a mere exhale away from him, was honoured to have a front row seat for when the waterworks started. 

“You  _ knew  _ why I moved. You knew! _ So why did you still do it?!”  _ Renjun blubbered inelegantly, shoulders folding in and on itself, and spittle was flying everywhere. Jeno didn’t seem to mind, though (bless his heart). He only glided towards Renjun, closing the distance with one easy stroke of his boots, and scooped him into a tight embrace. He normally would’ve fought against it, but this time, he was too tired to do anything other than to hug Jeno in return. Besides,  _ this,  _ everything that's happened in the last two days, was  _ not _ normal. So whatever, right? 

  
  


There wasn’t much happening while Jeno held him. They only stood there, slightly rocking on their heels, where Renjun noticed that his left ankle was getting sore. Everything was scored with an undercurrent of white noises, courtesy to Renjun’s wet sniffles, and Jeno’s sorries. 

_ Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry,  _ he repeated. 

Renjun would’ve usually found something like that tiresome and annoying really, really quickly. But that time, it sounded to him more like a lullaby than a patronising drone, so he let him be. Besides, it felt to him as if Jeno was saying it more to console himself than to soothe Renjun. So Renjun let him be. He let Jeno rock him, side to side. He let Jeno stroke his back in a jittery manner. And Renjun let him take his time on finding a way to say the words that were still left behind.

_ “… I made myself believe.” _

Renjun wouldn’t have noticed that Jeno said anything if not for the sudden movement of his chin that was resting on his shoulder. His voice was  _ that _ small.

“After you moved, I made myself believe that it wasn’t that big of a deal.” Jeno paused his rockings, and it caused Renjun to open his eyes. He soon noticed that a thick cloud must be passing in front of the moon, as they were plunged to darkness so thick he couldn’t see anything in front of him.

Or maybe it was just Jeno’s sweater being mushed in front of his face when the boy shifted around uncomfortably and ended up nearly suffocating Renjun with the crook of his elbow. 

“It was just a name, you know? It was… I thought it was just… it was just a joke.” Jeno must’ve noticed, from the way Renjun was pattering his hand on his arm, that Renjun was struggling to breathe. So, kindly, he readjusted their position, adding enough distance that he could now comfortably look at Renjun’s face in a prolonged period without having to hurt his neck. 

Jeno was greeted with a pout framed by a nest of tangled, unruly hair. It surely was such an unexpected sight that laughter managed to escape from his previously grave expression. 

“I guess it worked.” Jeno said, apologetically, when he saw that his laughter only brought a deeper frown into the lines of Renjun’s face. “Because it wasn’t until the next time I saw you that,-”

“That you grew a soul?”

They both couldn’t help it. They lost it at Renjun’s sudden intrusion. Laughing for a good three minutes before Jeno was able to gain command on his words once more. “That I realised how much I’ve hurt you.” 

The atmosphere was brought down considerably after that, and Renjun was only able to stare at his shuffling boots from the slight embarrassment he was feeling right then. To realise that he was at someone else’s mind in such a way… it was quite terrifying. 

“I’ve tried to approach you, a lot of times before, if you ever realised,-”

“Oh, I did.”

The blush on Jeno’s cheeks flared even deeper. “It’s just that it never really worked out, I guess, because you always… you uh… always uh…,-”

“Ran away? Well yeah, because your idea of apologising before this was kinda more like a bull charging against a red cloth.”

The high amount of embarrassment that he was feeling was expelled in a puff of white cough. They’ve been standing on the ice idly for so long the cold has caught up on them once more.

“I know I can’t apologise for the rest of the… the…”

“Crusted shitstain?” Renjun was capable of giving them a worse name, but as the one he chose was enough to send Jeno into another fit of laughter, he decided to settle with what he had. 

“Demon spawns.” Jeno said when he caught his breath, before oddly, he allowed the air around them to settle once more. It was as if he’s taken a crash course on how not to panic when he found himself trapped with Renjun in silence. 

The way Jeno looked at him made Renjun think that he was going to be pulled into another hug. But no. Instead, Jeno went and carefully smoothed a frizzed up strand of hair on the side of his head. “But I hope you’ll forgive me. Maybe? One day? Somehow?”

Renjun raised his eyebrows in defiance and it seemed to flick a switch on Jeno’s panic once more. As if fifty thousand speech bubbles screaming  _ ‘oh god! It’s not enough!! It’s still not enough!!!’  _ popped at the same time within his brain. It left him hilariously, pathetically scrambling for purchase. 

“I mean,- I’m  _ not  _ good at apologising??? Like, if you can’t tell from how long it took me to uh…  _ do it properly!  _ But ya know,-”

It was only when Jeno began to skiddle on his spot, as if preparing for another sprint, that Renjun decided he was done playing mean that night. 

In a display of fairness, Renjun went ahead and this time scooped Jeno up to an embrace. “I will try.” He said with an accompanying laughter, “I will try, only because you did well enough this time.” 

The shock from Renjun’s action quickly subdued him, and Jeno followed him along the path of calmness with a sigh tailed by a breathy chuckle that showed his relief. His arms climbed up to Renjun’s back, and Renjun found himself biting his lips to prevent any witty words (his brain’s instinctual reaction when dealing with emotionally compromising situations) to escape from them and ruin the lovely atmosphere they were in. But of course, he failed.

“Just… maybe try to think before you speak next time? Use that little brain of yours,” Renjun said while tapping Jeno’s temple with his middle finger, “or have you damaged it from falling on the ice once too many times?”

Accepting his fate, Jeno only nodded his head into the nook of Renjun’s neck and he couldn’t deny it. It felt  _ wonderful.  _

Truly, everything did. Because finally they were back to how everything was. Light, and airy. Just like Jeno’s laughter, and the way he instinctively nuzzled his nose to the side of Renjun’s neck. Light and airy. Easy. So much so that it caused his lungs, which were already used in doing a four minutes mock free skate routine not long prior, to struggle to function.

He couldn’t fight off the yawn that tickled at the back of his throat. 

“Let’s get you back to bed.” Jeno said with an accompanying ruffle of Renjun’s hair. He could feel the air from Jeno’s laughter against his nape and it took him every morsel of his self control to not break out in an embarrassingly girlish giggle. The last thing he needed that night was a shameful tickle fight. 

So Renjun pushed himself away from the hug, before  _ anything else _ could happen, and took Jeno along with him to the audio booth with an easy loop around his wrist. “Finally, a good idea from you.”

“Are you saying that going to the ice cream shop wasn’t a good idea? How about the summer festival???” 

Renjun rolled his eyes from how baby-like Jeno’s voice sounded when he whined his protests, “god, you’re disgusting.”

Their eyes met when Renjun was seeking for an aim to direct his playful punches to, and instead of an exaggerated pout, he was greeted with a smile that rivalled even that of Mona Lisa’s. Okay. It was a hyperbole on Renjun’s part, but still. It was a painting so enchanting Renjun found his breath sticking at the back of his throat when he saw it. As if it knew that it wasn’t adequate enough to exist in the same realm that’s being occupied by  _ that smile _ . 

“What?” Jeno asked, when Renjun had been staring at him with a gaping mouth for approximately fifteen seconds.

“Nothing…” He picked up his jaw from the floor while he still had dignity and mumbled, sliding away to the exit with a blush so potent steam must’ve been rising out of his ears. “You wouldn’t have to apologise if only you smiled like that to me earlier.”

His words caused Jeno to break out into a surprised laughter, and Renjun found it to be infectious. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” 

“Aw. Finally. Growing up, aren’t you?”

He felt a firm nudge on his back, followed soon by the sound of metal scraping against ice. Jeno zoomed past him and it caused him to let out a frustrated groan. How could he overlook such a slight?

He wanted a race?  _ You got a race. _

  
  


_ _ _

“We’re having a scrimmage tomorrow afternoon, would you come? I promise it’ll be fun.” 

Back at their deserted lodging (what with the kids and coaches still partying? Having a second supper somewhere downtown?), Jeno asked him that question a fraction of a second before Renjun went to turn the doorknob of his room.

“Hm… I don’t know,” Renjun said, genuine in his uncertainty, “Donghyuk said we're having mock tryouts in the morning. If coach Sicheng does his standard lecture afterwards…? I’m not sure if I can make it.”

Jeno began to compulsively scratch at his left ear, obviously struggling to find the courage to say what he wanted to say next. Which was odd, to say the least. Because he didn’t seem to struggle all that much earlier when he was spouting those disgustingly cheesy lines of his. 

“Then uh… will you allow me to watch your practice?” 

Look! There was even a blush on his cheeks! It amused Renjun to no end and he finally allowed Jeno to have a sneak peek of how an unbridled smile would look on his face.

“Of course! Of course you can. If you have no off-ice classes bef,- oh!” 

His sentence was cut short by the sensation of a peck on his cheek. A literal, physical… peck. Soft lips, pressing gingerly and by gingerly he meant full force bang on against his upper gum, and it was only then that Renjun learned the full, extensive reason behind the blush on Jeno’s cheeks. 

“See you tomorrow!” Was all he could hear from the quickly retreating form of Jeno, who shouted that sentence as he was sprinting down the bend of the stairs to his floor. 

His cheeks have begun to feel inflamed themselves, and Renjun found his hands moving on their own accord, climbing up to press against the heated puff of meat and calm them down with some much needed coolant. 

He felt… weirdly… elated.

But at the same time as when an uncharacteristically soft giggle escaped from his smile, Renjun felt two sets of eyes boring against the back of his nape. So strong that it caused the baby hairs on it to rise.

He turned his head around and saw, from between the small opening of his room’s door, Donghyuk and Mark, spying on him. 

_ “Disgusting.”  _ Renjun could still hear Donghyuk’s mumble even if there was a wooden door in front of his mouth. Donghyuk had his eyes squinted in suspicion, while Mark, above him, was looking at him with an expression best described as…  _ I just won a fifty thousand won bet. _

_ “Shut up.”  _ Renjun hissed, and paused. 

Then suddenly, after making sure that Mark and Donghyuk would  _ think  _ that he was going to head out to the communal bathroom, he went and kicked the door open, sending the two ungrateful bastards tumbling backwards. 

“AS IF YOU TWO CAN SPEAK!!!!” He yelled, cackling in mad laughter as he danced over the two poor lovebirds groaning on Donghyuk’s bed while cradling their quickly reddening foreheads. 

The second day of this MT has been a wild ride.

He couldn’t wait to see what tomorrow might bring. 

  
  


_

Renjun arrived at the rink the next morning with a gnawing sense of dread. Like he was carrying an embarrassment that he  _ knew _ he had kept so carefully from anyone else but himself yet still feared for the  _ what if _ .  _ What if people saw my face and  _ knew?

He dreaded meeting Donghyuk, of course.

And coach Sicheng. 

Renjun caught the gaze of his coach first thing after stepping foot onto the rink and he felt a blush growing on his cheeks in record speed. It didn’t help that his coach legitimately grinned at him and gave him a proud thumbs up. Could he tell? Of course he could.

But why did coach Sicheng have to give out questionable gestures that make it seem as if he and Jeno did something…  _ else? _

Renjun gave him a silent nod and ducked into the warm up room. 

Mostly everyone was already there, either pacing around in anxiety or laying on the ground, eyes closed with earphones jammed in to mute out their surroundings. Renjun joined Donghyuk and Chenle at the corner of the room and began his stretching routine in silence.

It was awkward, mostly because Donghyuk was trying his best to make it so. Wiggling his eyebrows and recklessly saying things like  _ ‘so are you excited?’  _ or  _ ‘when’s he gonna be here?’  _ right in front of his face and Chenle’s face, who could only look at them with utter confusion. 

Renjun would’ve normally retaliated. But lucky for Donghyuk, it  _ wasn’t  _ a normal morning, because it was true. All of it. Every single word of jeerings that Donghyuk said, it was true. 

He didn’t retaliate because of that, and the fact that he was completely preoccupied in trying not to totally lose his shit on the odd prospect of a literal outsider going in to specifically watch his training. 

They were stretching each other’s hamstrings when Donghyuk suddenly snickered. “You came with an entourage today.” 

To Renjun’s silent confusion, he only pointed at the tinted double door with an easy flick of his head. 

Behind it was the entirety of the hockey team, with Yukhei at the forefront, waving at them enthusiastically. 

His jaw went slack in horror. 

_ “What the fuuuuuck…” _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for the chapter titles that are only becoming more and more deranged as we go.
> 
> but why is lucas such a himbo that's the true mystery of life.


	7. effortless throughout

Renjun was ready to turn into a natural mystery by spontaneous combustion. He was just one wrong touch away from exploding into a Renjun sized human bonfire. 

But Chenle just had to ruin his moment by bunny hopping to the door to greet his new friend.

Renjun could only sit there, in front of a cackling Donghyuk, as he stared at the culprit that made all this happen. The person who brought hell to earth himself. There, at the bottom left corner of the door. Jeno. Squating on the floor, Jeno, and that crinkled smile of his.

Without fear he joined Yukhei in giving Renjun a set of friendly hand waves.

Wrong choice on his part.

Because the moment Renjun was able to storm out of the room, Jeno was greeted with a punch on his arm. 

_ “Owww!  _ Is this how you normally say thank you?”

“What did you do?!”

Jeno only pouted at the question, giving Renjun a silent treatment as he sauntered off to the audience benches at the side of the rink.

“ _ Jeno!!” _

“The kids were interested after watching your demo yesterday,” he said with a shrug, “they asked me if they could come, so I said yes!”

“Don’t you have… don’t you have like a,- like a,- I don’t know?! A morning  _ gym thing?!” _

Renjun felt a firm pat on his shoulder and looked to his side to see who  _ dared  _ touch him when it was so clear that he was seething in annoyance. But then he looked to his left, and tilted his head upward (when he was only greeted by the vision of someone’s muscly upper arm), and saw that it was  _ coach Choi.  _

“MT! It’s an MT. I told them to have a cheat morning for once,” he said as he took a seat beside Jeno. Beside a smiling Jeno. Beside a winking Jeno. 

Beside a Jeno that he would’ve assaulted if not for the fact that everyone was there and ready to go. 

“Come on, get in line,” Sicheng appeared from behind him and herded him, together with Donghyuk and Chenle, to the waiting area beside the DJ booth. Their gazes met, in a moment of serendipity, and after once again seeing that  _ grin _ on his face, Renjun’s suspicion was confirmed.

This was a two person operation. 

“Mental training, mental training,” his coach mumbled, ruffling his hair and ruining the bangs that he’d so meticulously styled this morning. 

All for naught. And somehow, he wasn’t mad at it.

Oh, he was mad all right. But he was mad at  _ Jeno.  _

He saw all five of the novice ladies swanning onto the ice for their warm up session to the raucous applause of the hockey kids and thought,  _ ‘forgive me my ass.’ _

The next time they met, Renjun promised to forgive Jeno by throwing fifty stones on his pretty face and not one less.

They both deserved it. 

  
  


_

“Wasn’t it fun?!” 

“Sorta…”

Renjun was sitting on a bench inside the changing rooms, hair freshly washed and body warm from the hot shower he took after the mock tryouts. But what usually would be a deathly quiet room, with it only occupied by him, Donghyuk, and Chenle, was then filled to the brim with rowdy laughter and excited creakings of old, rusted clothes hook. 

The hockey kids were getting ready for their scrimmage, and Renjun found himself stuck in the chaos after Sicheng went out of his way and added an extra twenty minutes into his special lecture. By the time he was done and was about to freshen up, Chenle was already sitting at the very top of the benches, waiting to watch Jisung and the rest of the novice gang, and Donghyuk was probably somewhere feeding Mark his good luck potion (he felt like throwing up when the imagery struck him).

That left him alone, with the rest of the junior hockey team. It was mortifying.

“You’re all so amazing thouuuuugh,” Yukhei sing-songed his way across the room, only wearing his red puffy pants and a similarly colored undershirt, looking not unlike a Thumb-thumbs in the movie  _ Spy Kids.  _ He gave Renjun a congratulatory whip, courtesy of his damp towel, in pin-point accuracy. It landed right on top of a quickly blooming bruise courtesy to his nasty fall on one of his free skate jumping passes. 

_ “Gege can you  _ please  _ stop!”  _ He yelled and rubbed the sore spot in annoyance, before turning his head towards Jeno and begging him to, “please be quicker!”

“Chill, our game won’t start until 11.30.” He answered from his spot on the ground, still so far behind the rest of his comrades in terms of getting dressed, as he was too busy enjoying his foam roller to even look at Renjun properly in the eyes. “Which means… we still have thirty minutes to warm up! Hooray!”

“Well what  _ I  _ need is some cool down,” Renjun hissed as he stood up and anxiously paced around the fogged up room. Everything was so condensed, and it was getting hard for him to breathe. 

Why didn’t he just go outside to get some fresh air? You might ask, and what a good question indeed!

Sadly, Renjun didn’t even know  _ why _ he didn’t want to just hang around outside of the changing room. Maybe it was because he felt embarrassed, or self conscious. Because what was a kid, who always avoided anything hockey related, doing on a hockey scrimmage? He could somehow  _ feel  _ the judgement given to him by the girls of his team as they gossiped from the viewing benches. 

_ Embarrassing! _

Why was he being so anxious anyway? He wasn’t the one playing? 

_ That’s _ also right. But somehow, weirdly, Renjun, a professional athlete for one of the harshest  _ ‘one mistake and you’re dead’  _ sport, never really liked watching a sporting event himself.  _ Especially  _ team sport.

  
It gave him the heebies jeebies. 

At least with his falls he knew it was his fault. If he failed to medal, he knew it was on him. But on a team sport? Holy  _ shit.  _ The pressure of not having complete and total control over the course of action was too much for him to handle. 

So yes, even if it was only a casual scrimmage, Renjun was certifiably losing his peanuts. 

But his heated internal grumbling was interrupted when he felt a cool sack hitting him on the back of his head. It plopped onto the floor, and when Renjun went to pick it up, he noticed that it was an instant cooling pouch.

“Put it there,” Jeno said while pointing at his own shoulder, “it’s starting to look awful. I can even see it through your shirt.”

Jeno was right. The moisture from his hair was seeping into his white shirt and it created a semi see through patch that clearly showed how a section of his shoulder was redder than the rest. Defeated, Renjun ambled back to the bench and sat down with a loud huff. “... Thanks.”

Through all that, Jeno only observed him with a simple smile. “You jump like an angel but when you fall,-”

“I fall like an elephant, yeah, right. I know. You don’t need to remind me of that.”

“What? No! I meant to say that you fall like a warrior!” Jeno sounded as if he felt personally offended by Renjun’s self deprecating remark, and honestly, if he had a gun to his head forcing him to tell the truth, he’ll say that  _ it felt kinda good,  _ being defended like that. 

Renjun blushed. Furiously. And it should’ve been enough to betray the truth behind his bitter words. “Stop it. Your cheese is disgusting.” 

“Is that so?” Knowing full well what he was getting himself into, Jeno climbed up to the bench and craned his head far enough that he was peeking through the thin curtain made out of Renjun’s bangs. “Well then… what kind of cheese do you like?”

But before he was able to retaliate with something witty, a familiar, very much hated voice came from the entrance of the changing room and worsened the already rancid atmosphere brewing between the two of them. “Yeeeeah Renjun, what kind of cheese do you like, huh?” Donghyuk jeered. Renjun flashed his middle finger, which went ignored because the kid was busy nodding his head towards Jeno and the rest of his teammates that were still in the process of getting ready. “Mark told me to round you all up. The game’s gonna start soon.”

To everyone’s silent confusion (as the clock showed that there was still twenty minutes before their allotted time), Donghyuk sighed. With much difficulty, he admitted to the situation outside.

“Some kid banged himself up, so coach Choi cut their game short ok? Now can we get going, please?”

  
  


_

Renjun found himself being forced to sit on the side bench by, who else, Donghyuk. He could only sulk with a pout as he mindlessly oversaw their club’s junior team on-ice warmup for their game.

His vision was partially distracted by the portable safety nets that were erected around the rink’s barrier, but it didn’t stop him from seeing the kid in question, the one who was responsible for cutting his age group’s game short. He was sitting right across from him with his arm bound on a bright blue sling. He was tiny, just a mere shrimp, reaching up only to Jisung’s jaw when they were standing side by side. He knew that Jisung’s a giant on his own accord, but still. He looked so small and fragile that Renjun couldn’t help but think,  _ is hockey even the right sport for him?  _

“Is he okay?”

“It’ll heal. He’s young.” Donghyuk shrugged. “It’s just a pity… to dislocate your shoulder right before the start of the season.” 

“How… brutal is this sport?” 

And as if to answer his question, a kid wearing a red jersey with a big, capital A printed in gold at its center zoomed across the ice and slammed himself onto his white-jerseyed teammate. 

_ “Holy sh-,  _ is that allowed?!” Renjun pointed at the surprising display of brutality and Donghyuk only responded with laughter.

“That’s nothing! Just wait till the midway point when they’re all getting riled up.  _ Hoo boy  _ if that ain’t a feeding frenzy I have no idea what else is.” 

It was hard to admit, but Renjun could see that Donghyuk was telling the truth. The two kids, one who he could now tell was Yangyang (of course), were acting just like their usual rowdy selves before they proceeded to chase each other in a circle.

Well, okay. He got one of his worries  _ sort of  _ soothed. But it only caused another one to sprout in its place.

“You sound… way too excited in describing the violence.”

“Well, you’ve seen them.”

Renjun felt the urge to barf when he heard the amount of… the amount of… the amount of  _ horniness  _ within and around his sentence. His tone. His expression. Renjun ended up getting a swat over his head for staring at Donghyuk with such a level of morbid fascination his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. 

“ _ Ow!  _ What was that for?!”

“It’s because you won’t just  _ fucking admit it!”  _

“Admit  _ what?!”  _

Donghyuk was seething. Eyes wide open and teeth gritted because, Renjun guessed, he was tired of trying and failing to worm his way into his psyche? 

They’ve been roommates for two years now. Nothing Donghyuk did, does, or will do can bother him anymore.  _ He’s seen it all. _

  
  
  


Well…

He spoke too soon.

Because Donghyuk reeled himself back and sat straight on his spot, and there was only a faint smile on his face when he spoke next. 

“Did you see their garters?”

Renjun’s face suddenly exploded in a warm, reddish palette that ranged from a dusty coral to deep maroon when yes, of course, he remembered. The garters.  _ The fucking garters.  _

“Thank you. For allowing me to win this round.” Donghyuk’s smile turned into a loud, victorious laughter, and Renjun really,  _ really wished  _ he still had his skating boots with him so he could reenact that one scene from the movie  _ Blades of Glory  _ on Donghyuk’s neck _.  _

But before that could happen, a sharp beeping sound broke through the loud chaos, saving Donghyuk in the process.

The game has started, and Renjun was  _ not _ looking forward to it. Totally wasn’t going to be super invested at who scores and who failed and who accidentally (or not) made fouls and he  _ totally  _ will not wave back at Jeno everytime he zoomed past him with his smile unhindered by those bright blue mouth guard, with every ounce of enthusiasm in his body.

He totally won’t do that.

So then please do tell, why, when Jeno skated past him as he was going to his starting position, and waved to him with the end of his hockey stick, Renjun already failed to stick to his self resolutions and responded with a shy salute and a medium-toned blush? 

_ ‘This is not going to go well,’  _ he thought.  _ ‘Curses.’ _

  
  


_ _ _

Indeed, the game didn’t go well.

As in, Renjun broke all his promises of just being a passive, sulky, I-don’t-want-to-be-there-mom kinda spectator and instead became so animated he inspired the several handfuls of people that were watching to also go ham in their support. And that, in turn, proved to be enough of a mental fuel to turn what would’ve usually been a run of the mill scrimmage into a heated match of skills and ego measurement for the hockey kids who were playing on the ice that day. 

He didn’t know the rules. He didn’t know any of the terms being shouted by coach Choi from the sidelines. He literally didn’t know anything at all about how a hockey game was supposed to be played but well, he knew that a goal is a good thing and a bodyslam is surely a bad thing, right? So Renjun made sure to show his joy (and of course, his rage) with clear screams across the semi deserted ice rink.

Donghyuk, poor kid, could only slink away on his seat, as if trying to tell the world that  _ I’m not with this guy and I don’t know who he is.  _

“PASS THE PUCK!! WHY ARE YOU HOGGING THE PUUUUUCK?! OH MY GODDDD!!!” That was one of the things he yelled when an unidentified kid failed to score because he attempted to cinch one by shooting a puck from the middle of the rink. An utterly worthless crackshot. 

Renjun would jump up and down in excitement everytime Jeno’s team commanded the tide of the game. He would slap his own mouth in shock when their opponent managed to steal the puck and flip the table around. He would pull on his hair when anyone, didn’t matter the team, failed to score. If this was how he acted during a friendly match, imagine how he’ll react during a legitimate competition. Someone from his friend group should really start thinking of investing in a straitjacket. 

But well, most importantly, his investment on the game was enough that he didn’t realise the numerous times when Jeno would look at him from the player’s bench, laughing at him in endearment and proudness everytime it seemed that Renjun was just one lazy cautionary slap (courtesy of Donghyuk) away from storming onto the ice and contesting the referee’s decisions. 

“Calm down!” Donghyuk hissed from his seat, pulling at the corner of Renjun’s t-shirt when the kid got a little too close to the rink’s barrier. 

He truly looked like a toddler who’s seeing a planetarium for the first time. Like everything that was unfolding in front of him was too magical for his unknowing brain to comprehend. Because no matter what Donghyuk told him, Renjun just couldn’t take his eyes off the full fledged  _ athletes _ slithering around on the ice.

“This is… beautiful,” he huffed when Donghyuk finally managed to tug at him firm enough to bring him back to the seat beside his, “they look like… they look like a school of fish.”

“That’s an odd comparison but okay.” 

“Look at those deep edges, and the directional switch! I thought they’re brutes but,-”

  
  


Does Renjun have a curse about speaking too soon?

  
  


Because as he was saying his sentence, something happened inside the rink. So quickly too, that the body hit the floor faster than the audiences could let out their surprised gasp. 

The game was instantly halted to allow the referees and coach Choi to tend to their fallen comrade. 

Renjun jumped to his feet. And Donghyuk too. The few seconds of trying to read the name at the back of the injured person’s jersey was just as tense as when he was waiting for his scores in the kiss and cry. 

“Who is it?? I don’t have my glasses, can you see?”

“Ssh! Wait they’re moving too much I can’t,-”

“Is it Mark? It’s not Mark is it?!”

“It’s… it’s Jeno.  _ Shit it’s Jeno.”  _

  
  


_ _ _

Renjun wasn’t thinking when he ran onto the ice. He had his horse blinders on and his eyes zoned in to the figure sitting on the ice. He was only able to avoid collision with the swarm of kids skating around him in confusion because of the way that his muscles have been trained to dodge Donghyuk’s surprise attack in the four years that he became his rink mate.

Mayhaps he slipped, what with him trying to run on ice while wearing his tennis shoes. But physical pain was easily bested by the dreadful feeling of his heart dropping to the bottom of his bum, when he could see that not only was Jeno struggling to get up from the ice, he was also surrounded by a scene of carnage. Scratched up helmet toppled at the side, and speckles of blood whose source was still gushing out from his nose, trailing down his jaw before blending into the collar of his crimson jersey. 

Worse yet, he was  _ laughing.  _

“Renjuuun!” Jeno greeted, in surprise, with a muffled voice as coach Choi was busy trying to stop the bleeding by covering the bottom half of his face with a wet towel. “What are you doing heeeere?”

“Are you okay?!”

He laughed again, seemingly without any care to this world, and Renjun felt like giving his head a good smacking for how he was making light of things.  _ But no,  _ he thought,  _ not now.  _ Renjun didn’t want to worsen Jeno’s possible head concussion  _ yet. _

“I’m finee~” He sang, waving his hand around. Even attempting to swat coach Choi away from his side as he stumbled back onto his feet with the grace and balance of a middle aged man that’s already in his third bottle of soju. 

“It’s just my nose.”

Renjun could see, then, very clearly, when Jeno went against coach Choi’s advice and wobbly bent down to pick up his knocked mouth guard, the extent to whatever impact by whoever the fuck has on Jeno’s nose. And it was… bordering on seeing a desecrated object of faith. 

This must be what ancient Egyptians felt when they woke up one day and found the Sphinx’s nose missing. 

When Jesus saw the temple courts being turned into a wet market… with chickens… 

Oh… Mona Lisa being vandalised. 

“Only your nose…?” At first, Renjun sounded just mildly incredulous. Pitying, even. But after he let Jeno’s words churn for a little while more, his demeanor, his expression, his tone,  _ his very being  _ shifted to adopt a terrifyingly furious stance. “ONLY YOUR NOSE?!” He yelled, and Jeno’s still scrambled inner ear must’ve reacted badly to it as he physically recoiled away from tiny, seemingly harmless Renjun, who without skates, only rose up approximately to the height of Jeno’s mouth. 

Seeing that the victim was in no way, shape, or form interested in seeking out a form of crack justice, Renjun turned around and quickly wiped his demon face into something of a professional, I’m-speaking-to-the-manager poise. “Mr. Coach Choi, sir, I apologise but you  _ have _ to tell me who did this to him.”

Coach Choi only looked at him with an amused smile. As if he too couldn’t wait to see where this odd, rarely seen situation would go next. “You have to promise me that you won’t jump him.”

Renjun’s silence and unmoving gaze should’ve been sufficient enough of a tell that he couldn’t promise that it won’t happen. Still, knowing that, Siwon’s smile turned into a grin as he pointed at somewhere slightly to the left of Renjun’s shoulder. It was all that Renjun needed to know that it’s an all you can eat buffet, everybody!

And there he was. YangYang. Standing shyly just a few strokes away from the commotion as he was hugging his hockey stick. There was a speck of red on the very tip of it, and Renjun prayed, for YangYang’s own safety, that it was paint, instead of what he suspected it to be. 

He looked like a terrified child who was waiting to get his ass whooped for breaking his mother’s favoured antique.

Renjun should’ve shown some mercy after seeing such a display of pitiful remorse.

He didn’t.

  
  
  


Renjun jumped him (of course). All the while yelling at the poor kid every German swear words he picked up from that one time he spent his summer camp in Berlin.

In this case, Donghyuk was 100% correct. Wait till half way through the game! Oh,  _ it’s feeding frenzy all right.  _

It took two physically buff hockey  _ people _ to pry him away from YangYang. Mark, who had him in a strong chokehold, and Yukhei, who secured his arms behind his back. Both of them were laughing so hard there were speckles of tears on their helmet’s visors. 

“SEE HOW YOU’LL LIKE IT IF SOMEONE SHAVE OFF YOUR EYEBROWS!” Renjun still managed to yell off one last insult before he was handed over to coach Choi and was then carried off the ice by the scruff of his jacket, “YOUR ONE BEAUTY!!” 

It was an embarrassing affair. This was the only case where everyone really was laughing AT him. But Renjun’s head was too fogged up by his rage, that he didn’t really feel anything other than anger towards the nasty  _ hodensack _ until he was sitting at the corner of the starkly lit infirmary. Silent. Cool. Sterile. 

The dread of his embarrassment was so heavy Renjun couldn’t pick up his head from staring blankly at his damp shoes.

Meanwhile, Jeno was sitting on the shoddy examination table with a pout on his face. He tried to jump out of it, but coach Choi easily nudged him back on just like how a mother cat would to their kitten. 

He pressed a bag of ice swathed in a wet towel onto Jeno’s face. “Sit. I’m asking the doctor to return.” 

“But I can still,-!”

“If I tell you to sit, you sit.” He said with a pointed tone, and for a split second, they all could feel the air around them shift. Just a second where Renjun could tell that oh… so this is why a seemingly carefree person like him could be a great coach. Nobody would’ve dared to come for him in that split second. Not even the president, perhaps.

But just like that, the mood of the room returned to one filled with shame and embarrassment. For some reason, Renjun preferred the pure killing intent than whatever he was going through then.

“Renjun, you gotta watch him, okay?” Coach Choi patted his shoulder before he walked out of the infirmary. “If he tries to go back to the ice you tackle him down like how you did to YangYang back there.”

He was only able to respond with a little nod, but coach Choi seemed to find it adequate enough.

His little light hearted hum was cut when the door closed behind him, and Renjun went back to ruminating on his life choices that’d led him to end up as this… ball of uncontrolled emotion. He was contemplating on the premise of going to a scheduled professional therapy when Jeno’s cough pierced through the thick, dreadful air of the room.

“Are you okay?”

“Coach Choi would’ve made a great father.” 

“Uh… sure.” The rickety bed creaked when Jeno attempted to slide out of it and Renjun gave him a sharp look that could’ve killed him if things worked like that in their universe.

_ “You stay there.” _

“I just want to know if _you’re_ okay Injun,” he said as he huffed back onto the far edge of the bed. The frustration was palpable, from how Jeno managed to disassemble his boots and leg protection in a way that was both silent and loud at the same time. They all made a sharp thudding sound as Jeno threw them without care to the other corner of the room, and the grunts he made when he shimmied out of his puffy pants were surely designed to pique Renjun’s attention. Because there he was, sitting only wearing his undergarments and the cord of his damned garter belt _dangling_ enticingly between his legs. Sadly for him, Renjun couldn’t care less.

He ignored Jeno and kept his stares strictly trained at his shoes. “That should be  _ my  _ question.”

“This is nothing.” Jeno snorted. 

“How can it be nothing?!  _ You were bleeding everywhere!” _

“I’ve had my teeth chipped off! I’ve had a cut held close with a super glue so I can finish my game!  _ This is nothing!”  _

“Ohoho _ ho mister strongman!  _ Did you do that just to show me that you’re tough?!” Renjun didn’t realise that he’d gone up to his feet in the midst of their heated conversation. He didn’t notice that he was walking closer and closer towards the person he honestly, truthfully, didn’t want to have anything to do with at that very moment. 

“Wow. Self centered much?”

Renjun inhaled a gasp so animatedly insulted it caused Jeno to snort. It cost him a pelting of balled up tissue paper that rained down on him just like how Renjun was raining down on his rant. “This is why I hate you hockey kids! Everything is just a game, everything doesn’t matter! You only care for yourself!”

With each of his anger charged words, Renjun took a step closer towards the rickety bed. His head felt full, like it was being pumped with pressurised air, and his cheeks were getting so hot the fumes caused his sight to be distorted. 

He didn’t realise he was walking into a trap.

He didn’t realise that Jeno was there. Sitting calmly. Smiling. 

“You could’ve died! You  _ might  _ die! I don’t know! You might fall asleep tonight and not ever wake up again and what would be the point of all this, huh?! Forgiving you only for you to die the next day over?!”

“So you’ve forgiven me.”

Up until then, Renjun was lost in the crimson world of his rage. But Jeno's calm words tethered him back to planet Earth, and Renjun’s breath caught at the back of his throat when he realised that his fury had brought them to a near negligible distance. 

Near negligible distance that was made into a clear zero when Jeno leaned over and captured Renjun’s heated face inside his cool palm. 

But even then, everything was still crimson. Jeno’s nose, which has swollen twice its normal size into something like a detachable clown prop. His jersey, damp and slick under his touch when Jeno tugged him forward and Renjun had to scramble for purchase if he didn’t want to give Jeno a headbut and dramatically worsen the situation. Their knees touch in a move that cinched Renjun’s ribcage with a tight knot, and he learned that the inside of his eyelid could also appear to be crimson when he pulled them tightly over his eyes as an involuntary way to shield himself from the inevitable. 

Which was Jeno’s lips, as crimson as the dried blood that was still smeared all around it, crashing against his in a way that made Renjun remember that even if yes, he’s forgiven Jeno ten times over since last night, he’s also internally revoked that forgiveness eleven times afterwards. 

Because their teeth bumped, harshly, against each others’, Jeno’s nose nudged him around like it was his first time driving using a stick shift in pitch darkness, and his shoulder pads dug into Renjun’s ribs like the pure annoyance that they were. Didn’t help that he was in the process of perpetually trying to prevent himself from slipping against Jeno’s slinky jersey and falling into the lap of this opportunistic ass to reciprocate Jeno’s sloppy excuse of a kiss.

It was aromantic to the max, and Renjun tasted nothing but the salt from a layer of dried sweat and the crackling iron tang of blood when he ran his tongue between their lower lips in poorly marked disgust. 

Or was it?

Because when they thankfully parted, Jeno’s eyes were hovering open like a pair of lightbulbs running only on half of its recommended juice, and Renjun remembered Donghyuk’s words. 

_ If that ain’t a feeding frenzy, I don’t know what is.  _

“I’ve been wanting to do that ever since you jumped YangYang,” Jeno said, his voice low and languid from being drunk on the cocktail of brain chemicals that must’ve been of abundance to him for the last quarter of an hour or so. “I thought…  _ damn, _ but I know you wouldn’t want,-”

Renjun has got a taste for blood. For the disgusting, testosterone filled chum that permeated the water all around him in an intoxicating lure, and so Jeno only had himself to blame when Renjun got ahold of his stained collar and pulled him back to start their next round in the game of  _ sloppy makeout session.  _

But even if Jeno  _ could _ blame himself, it didn’t seem that he ever  _ would.  _ Because he was too busy giggling into Renjun’s fierce kiss, so much so that he had to push him away, as easily as a ragdoll, and ordered him to perform with a little, breathless command.

“Shut up and  _ kiss me back.”  _

  
  


_

Donghyuk was the one who found them. 

It was both good  _ and _ bad that things were to happen that way because his squeal was loud and long enough for Renjun and Jeno to jump five feet away from the other and tidy their appearances up before the entourage of hockey kids and medical personnel poured into the room. But then…

“You… you were  _ eating his face off.” _

“Excuse me but look who’s talking mister saliva dispenser!”

“Saliva d,-  _ could he even breathe?!  _ You were  _ straddling him like a horse!” _

_ “Oh my god Donghyuk you mosquito!  _ I saw you  _ feeding  _ on Mark’s neck like a black fly!”

  
  


A loud cough interrupted their hushed argument and they both looked to the origin of the sound, which was a very flustered looking doctor and her nurse, who was trying her best to not break out in laughter.

  
  


“So? How’s he doc?” Donghyuk spoke first, after letting out an awkward cough when he realised that everyone in the room was able to catch every single word he said in the last ten minutes or so.  _ Duh. _

The doctor masked her embarrassment by loudly throwing away the used swaddle of gauze into the bin. “He’s going to be fine. Nothing was broken.”

“Oh thank god, otherwise I was planning on breaking YangYang’s nose as revenge.”

Another cough from the doctor, another mumblish sorry coming from the disastrous pair. 

“Well, thank you for that ma’am,” Jeno said, the patch of thick cotton pressed on his nose causing his voice to go up into a nasal whine and making him sound far more friendlier and adorable than he usually was. The blush on the nurse’s cheeks were so pronounced Renjun felt sort of bad when after jumping out of the rickety bed (and it wasn’t until there were two people lying on it that Renjun learned full well of how  _ ancient  _ that thing could be), Jeno went straight to his side and scooped him up into an easy hug. “Now please excuse us because we haven’t had our lunch yet!”

Renjun should be ashamed for what he said next. Because Jeno gave him such an easy bait to turn all the awkwardness into something light and family friendly!

Instead, probably as revenge because he found himself giving Donghyuk a delighted side eye before he executed his plan, Renjun stared deeply into Jeno’s eyes and said,

“And we’re  _ starving.”  _ With a voice most closely described as a… sexual growl. 

Behind him, Donghyuk dry heaved. 

The doctor choked on the sip of water she was taking.

And the nurse? The nurse internally wept because she must be thinking,  _ ‘where have all the good men gone?’ _

  
  
  


I get you sister.

I get you.

  
  
  


In the end, as a really funny way that  _ is _ a trademark for how the universe works, Renjun found himself sitting beside Jeno, in a tightly packed hockey bus on their way home from their weekend MT. Contently. 

But things  _ were  _ different. New faces were seen, and things looked far less homogenous that it was three days ago.

Donghyuk was there, of course, playing card games with his beau and a slew of other junior team’s members. 

And at the back, Yukhei was being happily surrounded by Jaemin and his group of seemingly equally lanky speed skating kids, nose buried deep in each of their portable gaming systems. 

YangYang, in turn, was not there of course. Well, ok. Not  _ of course.  _

He did apologise to Jeno and Renjun, and he did ask Renjun for permission to spend his return trip in the figure skating bus. With the girls.  _ Of course.  _

“You can do whatever you want,” Renjun said, “but just know what I’ll do to you if I catch you fooling around.”

The way he scurried away was sort of hilarious, and well… he  _ did _ spend their conversation not daring to look at Renjun directly.

So maybe… it  _ was  _ an _ ‘of course’ _ ? 

  
  


“How are you doing?” Jeno, the ever so kind, the  _ ‘sacrificed the window seat because Renjun wouldn’t stop skulking about it’ _ Jeno, asked. 

Renjun took off half of their shared earbuds to answer. “Pretty well.”

Nothing really happened after the kiss, even if maybe they did spend nearly half an hour making out by the back alley of their dorm before either of them were ready to pack up for their return trip. 

But the brief separation, the big takeaway meal courtesy to a very apologetic coach Choi sitting on his desk, and the cooling down effect that it brought on him (not counting the numerous jabs Donghyuk hurled his way), caused Renjun to act as if he never ever learned of Jeno’s name when they met the next time around. 

Honestly, he was  _ this _ close from hauling his suitcase into a nearby convenience store, asking the clerk to call him a taxi, and taking the train back to the city. 

And truly, that was even how Jeno found him. Standing stock still in the middle of his room with his jacket on, knuckles white from how hard he was holding onto his suitcase’s handles. 

Renjun would’ve blown him off if Jeno did anything weird. If back there, in his empty room, what with Donghyuk already gone since an hour earlier to have one last frolic with Mark, Jeno made just one wrong move, said one wrong thing, let out one wrong breath, Renjun would’ve bailed out of there quicker than the speed of Eteri discarding her female skaters after they reach puberty. 

But Jeno didn’t mess up, did he? Because Renjun didn’t run away. Because there they were, sitting on the bus, shoulder to shoulder in a truest sense of having gone through a weekend chock full of character development. 

Because back there, he saw how Renjun was behaving and decided, accurately, that he needed his time. And so Jeno only quietly herded him to the bus and on the way served diligently as a metal support rack while Renjun pretended to be a well functioning member of the society while inside, he felt like he was made of nothing more but a pack of wasps angrily feasting on the decomposing body of a skunk. 

Those were the first words they exchanged after nearly an hour of their return journey had passed. Only said when Renjun’s begun humming to the song that they were sharing and Jeno, once again, correctly assumed that he’s recharged his previously exhausted social battery.

And Renjun made sure to not waste his second sentence, as he said it while giving Jeno’s still sore nose a playful nudge with the side of his head. “I should be the one asking you that.”

They shared their first smile in what seemed to be such a long time when Jeno dissolved into a flurry of exaggeratedly pained whines and sobs. Though it didn’t take long for him to sober up. One sharp jab onto his arm was all that it took for Jeno to drop his act and lean closer to him so he could pick up their halted conversation. 

“It reminds me of something. I wanted to tell you this but you know, you got quite angry back then and then well… things… happened.” He then began to giggle, and Renjun’s heart soared to such height he had to resolve to another jab to prevent it from causing the bus to lift up from the ground. “Yes! Yes I’ll stop! Gee… well, I wanted to say that I also feel the same worry everytime I watch you perform, you know?”

When he saw the notch of puzzlement of Renjun’s eyebrows, Jeno elaborated. “Your falls are… astronomical.” He paused, only to lift his head up so he caught Renjun’s gaze with an easy smile. “But I know that you’re in your element, and I trust you.”

It’s odd. Renjun realised that he’s never looked at someone’s eyes as thoroughly as he did with Jeno then. And he knew it had nothing to do with the conversation they were having, but Renjun was overcome with the notion of wanting to let Jeno know that he might never be able to ever forgive him. Or even if he does, that he will never forget what he did and the repercussion of his action. Will Jeno be okay with that?

His hand, slowly moving over to Renjun’s side of the seat to lie awkwardly over his own, was a way of answering Renjun’s silent questions and at the same time, asking him something so nicely in return. 

_ It doesn’t matter to me, so please? _

It would’ve been so easy for Renjun to answer that question, but he still wanted to know if Jeno was ready to live with that, with the burden of having to be around someone who will look at you like you have a physical notch for everytime you’ve hurt them. 

Jeno’s fingers further creeped around Renjun’s tense wrists and they were once again asking him so, so nicely.  _ Please? Pretty please? Just this once, be kind to me. And afterwards I’ll let you do to me whatever you see fit. _

It was a lucrative offer, so Renjun took it. He gave Jeno his kindness. He opened up his palm to accept Jeno’s invitation for a hand hold, and showed Jeno that he was capable of being merciful.

“If I get invited to the junior Grand Prix…”

His sentence was interrupted when Jeno’s gaze hardened into something akin to a protest. Renjun caught onto it right away, and he fixed his sentence with a tired huff. 

“ _ When  _ I get invited to the junior Grand Prix,- happy?,- will you watch?”

Satisfied with the fact that he could make Renjun doubt himself less, Jeno’s gaze softened. His grip around Renjun’s fingers, which previously was riddled with nerve and, Renjun just realised,  _ fear,  _ also softened. Into something lax and casual. Terrifyingly normal. Something that made Renjun believe that it didn’t deserve to be hidden beneath the spread of his jacket. 

And so, in a burst of courage, Renjun pulled their entwined hands up from underneath the shadows and kept it closer to his heart. 

It seemed to have done something good to Jeno’ psyche, because he quickly devolved into a bubbly mess that was only able to whisper to his ears, over and over, a very joyful  _ ‘of course’.  _

Truly, they were slaves of their own hearts. Because without thinking that it was so easy for them to be seen by others, Renjun leaned closer to him and became the one in return to eliminate the distance between them with a quick peck on his lips. 

He whispered. “I will not fall if you’re there.” 

“Even if you do, I’ll catch you.”

Renjun wanted to scoff, and tell Jeno that no matter what happened between them, his attempt at being sweet would always come across as something rancid. But he was being kind, wasn’t he? Just this one time. 

So he smiled, before returning the half of his earbud back to his left ear. ABBA was playing and it served as the perfect lullaby for when he calmly rested his head on Jeno’s shoulder and closed his eyes.

This is him, being kind. 

(Though he won’t guarantee that Jeno would enjoy whatever it is that he’d do to him, when they arrive back at their home rink, as he sees fit.) (But honestly, whatever it is…… he would.)

  
  
  


The MT has finally ended, together with the nightmare of his past.

Indeed, a long weekend well spent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO THAT CONCLUDES THE 30K MONSTER OF SELF INDULGENT FIGURE SKATING VS HOCKEY FIC!!!!!
> 
> Honestly, I had so much fun writing this that I _might_ add some sequels to it because I want want want want _want_ to write their shenanigans in Winter Youth Olympics or how Jeno would react watching Renjun in Junior Grand Prix Final or maybe Junior Worlds or Renjun going apeshit watching Jeno play a legit match LIKE THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.
> 
> But I'll have to say goodbye for now.  
> Prompter... lady, sir, whoever you are, I hope you enjoy this... I'm so sorry for not including the hockey stick funeral because that shit's hilarious (maybe in the next instalment ;;;). I had so much fun writing this, thank you so much for your prompt.
> 
> Once again, hmu @ my twitter [@moon__soil](https://twitter.com/moon__soil) for your bimonthly dose of renjun pics and deniss vasiljevs spam. 
> 
> thank you!!!


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